[Lyinginbedmon]

Yes, the whole system (Including firewood) fits inside a 30' by 20' room. It initially uses a rain-collection system to gather water, which is fed through a low-power permanent wall of fire to purify it, and it is then sent to both a large collection barrel for storage and a small allotment where it continually grows the vegetables. It requires little maintenance and as long as the water supply is adequate it can run indefinitely.
 F_WS.bmp (31.55K)
Number of downloads: 40

The Dead-Nicks also have a freezer, but that's another story

[Raven Bloodmoon]

Well, I guess I need to ask you for a license to stick that down the gullot of the Tarrasque.

[WoeTheSinner]

Though covering the whole ship in adamantium sounds like a great idea, I think its gonna be HELLA expensive. With your shielding system in place I think you can get away with the ships magical Iron hull and have a thin inner lining of lead to prevent radiation from coming though. Remember this is suposed to be more an exploration vessel than a gunship.

Ok I think the real basics are covered. WE can eat drink and breathe inside our ship. How are we going to move it? How will it move normaly and how will it move in "hyper" speed?

Do we want a rechargeable "hyperdrive"? what spells/ items will be needed to create it? An as far as normal movement is concerned?

[Axel]

Leave the stars as they are. They're massive clumps of gasses undergoing fussion, when they burn up their supply of feul they collapse. If their mass is great enough they collapse into super dense, super tiny objects that have such a massive gravitational pull that even light cannot escape. No need to tie in planes where they aren't needed and would only add confusion.

As for the FTL drive, didn't we decide to use a teleport spell cast by the ship itself and controlled by the telepathically linked pilot? Because I think all the other ideas were shot down either because they were infeasable or had major plot holes.
I suppose a levitate spell could be used for the sublight drive. It wouldn't even have to be that strong, there's no gravity to work against. Enough to overcome the ship's inertia would be enough to move it. Kicking up the power would only improve its acceleration.

Oh, and a steel hull thick enough to prevent depressurization will be strong enough to prevent any radiation from affecting the crew.

[Darius]

Raven Bloodmoon, on Jun 1 2005, 07:20 AM, said:

Garden, not so sure.  Doubt that it would provide enough replenishment to work for six people.  Also, it would take up a lot of space and space is at a premium.  For food, I'd suggest a Create Food & Water item.

By the way, I'll start working on costs for all these little gizmos as we create them.

The suckers going to cost anyway so why now set up the garden in a pocket dimension onboard , that way you can have an entire farm

D

[Raven Bloodmoon]

Firstly, I know how a star, supernova, and black holes function. I have written several papers on them just to annoy professors who insist on excesive term papers. Second, you decided on a ship that casts teleport on itself at teh behest of a telepathically linked pilot. We are still discussing it. Third, two layers of alimunim foil were sufficient to prevent depressurization for the Apollo missions; are you telling me that two layers of aluminum foil will block out all of the cosmic radiation in a solar system?

Let's try to stay productive. We have food, water, clean air, a solution to refueling the hyperdrive, a couple of options for a hyperdrive, a defense screen, and at least two humorous, if not interesting methods of normal propulsion and maneuvering. Let's sort out the hyperdrive right now so we can put it to rest and move on.

Here are the options as they seem to stand:

1) Use a gate spell to transport the ship to another plane where it can go really fast relative to the Material Plane. A second gate spell brings it back into the Material Plane.

2) Use a teleport spell in conjunction with scrying, sensors, and calculations to jump instantatneously from one location to another. Calculations to accurately jump slow down progress between jumps and teleport charges will need to be replenished periodically.

3) Ship can teleport itself at will at the command of a telepathically-linked pilot who finds himself quite drained after each jump. This may have the extenuating effects of leaving the ship dead in the water while the linked pilot recovers, less than optimal performance by the linked pilot after a jump, and if pushed too hard, the death of the linked pilot. Note that no fuel is required, and no upkeep on the drive is necessary.

Let's get some votes on this. I vote option 2.

[Axel]

If you're going to use that sort of rubbish you may as well skip to the inevitable and build a Tardus. (I hope I spelled that right....) Just have a phone booth exteriour and a ship as large as you like. No, the ship will be no larger inside than outside, that's why we're using a Tarrasque sized golem.

On the Tarrasque a hydroponics bay might be impractical. But if we ever get to the HDMS Gargantua, or whatever you want to call the inevitable warship, it might be a good idea.

[Raven Bloodmoon]

Nice setup. That would be a good self-sustaining food supply, but I don't know that that few plants would be sufficient to keep the air clean. As far as pocket dimensions go, if we take that route, we might as well make this a flying doorway to a citadel, complete with peasants farming for us, maids washing our clothes and cooks making our meals. We are trying to avoid such fantastic things. Just one moderately large flying spaceship. And we need to decide on its core enchantment: How in the Orrery does the blasted thing travel between stars. See the options presented above.

[Axel]

If you know how the astronomical landmarks work, then leave them alone. Screwing with them can only destabilize your universe, cause headaches, and confuse people.

As for the insulation, again the most common type of nuclear radiation is an alpha particle and you can block those with a piece of paper. Yes I think a sheet of iron is sufficient. Honestly, I think you've got more to worry about in the form of micrometiorites than from radiation. Solve one problem and the other is handled.

I vote for number 3.
Number 1 is impractical because a) it needs an extra plane and it'd be best to keep the bloody things to a minimum; going someplace where the laws of physics are all screwy is just asking for trouble; c) the necessity that you know exactly where you're going to get back out reduces the chances for exploration, unless you're some kind of daredevil; and d) a little creative wiring could turn it into a plane-ship, and do we really want that?
Number 2 is all right, but I prefer having a telepathically linked pilot to improve the ship's response time and maneuverability. And if you're going to have the pilot linked telepathically anyway it follows that he'd control the FTL drive. And I think it makes sense that running the Drive would be difficult and extremely taxing as far as the pilot is concerned.

[Raven Bloodmoon]

Okay, reading that I can see where our differences lie. I have no qualms with running the ship telepathically. It cuts down on the scifi bolognium required. I just don't think that operating the stardrive will be any more taxing than using a stack of scrolls of teleportation. That is all the drive does anyway. It teleports the ship to the destination it is told. If we need to insert some sort of time requirements and the like, I'd say make telling the ship exactly where to go be the problem. Considering that everything in the universe is constantly in motion, it ma prove more challenging that one things to teleport to a specific planet, even with the aid of scry and the like.

[Axel]

I'm looking at it like your Spellfire thread. The ship is channeling the energy directly and the pilot controls the ship's travel. What seems instantaneous to the crew may seem an eternity to the pilot. There's no spells or scrolls or anything else protecting him from the passage, just him and the ship.
Then again, I picture a telepathically linked pilot becoming extremely attached to his ship. Maybe even prefering flight to... everything else. So what do I know.

I suggest you look at Louis McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan books, they're alot like what I'm thinking of.

[Raven Bloodmoon]

I know what you are talking about, but that is not the direction I think it should go. It is called a Pilot and a Leviathan in Farscape. It's been done. And I don't see why you continue to push it.

[WoeTheSinner]

Yeah i'm gonna go for option 2. i am a fan of the telepathic control of the ship as well though. it will make life much easier in general, and you can get on witht he aedventure rather than 3 months of figuring out how to pilot this thing. Pluss in the world of magic I really think that getting drained by the magic basicaly means 8 hours of rest...which we are taking into account via the mage having to refil the hyperdrive with teleport spells.

Making super hard turns or "rushed" jumps or whatnot should incurr some skill/ability checks or whatnot to make it fun, but for the most part you just want players to get in and go

For the sublight drive are we going to go with a levitate spell or with a fly spell? The leveitate spell will be cheeper, but the fly spell I think will work better when you want to land on a planet.

Also the force wall shields will need to be an item that turns on and off at will obviously so that will have to be factored into the price. On a sidenote I envision the bigger warships having banks of dissintergration rays ready to go to take down the shields of your enemies since force walls are basicaly invulnerable I keep thinking that these battleships would be ridiculous which might explain why it always seems to take a whole planet or 10 to build them in sci-fi

Back to the topic at hand, how are we going to handle gravity? I cant really think of any spell that really mimics this. i supose we could put something like telekinesis that always pushes in a certain direction...ideas?

As a corrolary to all this, i have been thinking that the range of most of the spells in DnD is WAy to short for space...do we want to say that space increases ther ange of spells? I don't know if we want to open up that can of worms.

Oh, one more thing...will our ship have a self destruct ?

[Lyinginbedmon]

If we're paying over 2 mil to build it, I doubt we're going to be in too much of a hurry to blow it up.

For gravity, why not just have no gravity? It's not a really big problem as far as people go, and permanent fixtures or magnetism would hold objects down. Alternatively, you could just use the same magnetism with ship-issue iron-soled boots

[Axel]

Raven, the term Pilot isn't exactly something coined by Farscape. We can use the word without copying the show.

If you spend too much time in nulgee your muscles atrophy and your bones detereorate. Excersize and calcium can delay the effects, but it will still happen.

Let's go with levitate for sublight and simply not have the ship land. Throw a teleporter on board to allow the crew to beam up or down. Alternatively we could use levitate for sublight and throw a fly in for landing. Although, I see no reason we couldn't let gravity bring the ship down and simply use the levitate drive to slow the decent to something managable.
BTW: I deffinitely don't see the battleships landing.