Airships

Only when kept afloat by organic flying stones.

...

I'm actually planning a novel based on the airships that could've been in the mid-thirties, so I've been doing some research. Apparently these were a thing: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal-clad_airship

Like, a real thing they actually did.

And this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZMC-2

>As a sub-scale test vehicle, it was considered to be very successful, but the company that built it did not weather the Great Depression well, and by the time a successor might have been built, there was little interest in pursuing it. In the year before the Depression, the U.S. Army was seeking funding for an airship based on the ZMC-2, that would have been larger than the German Graf Zeppelin, and powered by eight engines of 600–800 hp (450–600 kW; 610–810 PS)}. The U.S. Army planned to use it as a tender for air-launched aircraft, similar to plans the U.S. Navy had for future dirigibles. The $4.5 million need for construction was never approved by Congress.

So the military was seeking to expand on the Makron/Akron concept with a larger aircraft-carrying airship that could sling more aircraft and would have far superior/more durable construction. Pretty fuckin neat, eh? I've been trying to figure out how these craft would be made more durable so they could survive attack - sub-dividing the gas-bag to compartmentalize against leaks is a no-brainer. A way to use hydrogen gas without the boom boom shake da room problem would be nice too.

>are entirely at the mercy of the weather
Not particularly. When the U.S. Navy purchased a few zeppelins and put them through sea trials, they found they could weather much worse conditions than other aircraft of the period, simply by virtue of their greater mass. They lost a couple of them to weather, yes, but that's because their pilots put them through much more dangerous maneuvers than were sane--again, owing to the fact that they thought their vessels could handle them.

>Stupendously vulnerable to attack
Only if your foe is using incendiary ammunition and your lift gas in flammable. Prior to the Brits developing incendiary bullets, the zeppelins were pretty much unstoppable in their raids. This is, again, owing to the sheer amount of mass a zeppelin has, plus all of its redundant systems. You can pump bullets into the gas bladder all day, but the gas which escapes from those holes is minuscule compared to the rest the ship is carrying; it'll stay aloft long after.

>have a much harder time hauling cargo
Also incorrect. Rigid airships are capable of carrying immense loads. Taking the Graf Zeppelin as an example, it had a maximum effective lift of 132,000 lbs. To put that in perspective, a B-17 had a max load of roughly 8000 lbs, and that's only if they're flying less than 400 miles. The Graf was frequently traveling twice that on its voyages.

>Also incorrect. Rigid airships are capable of carrying immense loads. Taking the Graf Zeppelin as an example, it had a maximum effective lift of 132,000 lbs. To put that in perspective, a B-17 had a max load of roughly 8000 lbs, and that's only if they're flying less than 400 miles. The Graf was frequently traveling twice that on its voyages.

They're actually using airships to move cargo (logs, usually) in Sibera right now.

...

Economically airships would drive prices down as it isn't as expensive to procure materials. Production will move to cheaper locations, like how companies outsource to SE Asia, and there will be a more diverse variety of goods.

Aye aye captain no fun.

>no fun
Flying ruins more things than it helps.

Not if you're a capable DM and balance your setting for them beforehand

>I've been trying to figure out how these craft would be made more durable so they could survive attack
Well, like I said above, they're already durable than people give them credit for. Technologically speaking, though, the 30s wouldn't be very kind to them in a military sense. Anti-aircraft cannons and fast planes would mean airships would be highly vulnerable. That said, if you wing it by saying that these ships are fully-capable airborne aircraft carriers, though, then they at least have a plausible role to fill.

>sub-dividing the gas-bag to compartmentalize against leaks is a no-brainer
Indeed. This is precisely how the zeppelins were built, in fact.

>A way to use hydrogen gas without the boom boom shake da room problem would be nice too.
This would be more of a problem, since oxygen is invariably going to mix with the lift gas in the event of a puncture. The safer bet would be to use an inert gas like Helium, but that's going to cut down on your useful lift by a significant margin. Self-sealing gas bags are also a possibility, though that might be a bit too advanced for 30s-era tech.

How much can they haul?

I remember a gernan company named CargoLifter developing a freight zep / flying crane with a capacity of 200 metric tons, roughly 15 years ago.

They sadly went out of business due to a few accidents and mismanagement, and their hangar is now a roofed tropical hotel resort...

>Worrying about 30's era tech
Just say Edison / Tesla / Baron Von Zeppelin invented them, and they get a wash.

>Anti-aircraft cannons and fast planes would mean airships would be highly vulnerable. That said, if you wing it by saying that these ships are fully-capable airborne aircraft carriers, though, then they at least have a plausible role to fill.

Mostly the former that'd be a problem; but that was true in 1917 as well. The latter, not so much, since autocannons weren't very popular on 30s era aircraft and most fighters were still packing two .30 cal or .50 caliber machine guns. Zeppelins can (and did) have machine gun defenses of their own; but I suspect that even a 37mm pom-pom gun would very quickly cut into the weight allowance. Guns are HEAVY. (Still a right naughty bitch to attack in Red Baron, though.) One Zeppelin knocked down in WWI was actually hit with bombs from above by a particularly brave pilot; so you'd have to worry about primitive rockets and bomb attack.

Incidentally a large part of the setting involves a thriving business for mercenary pilots hired to escort airships for these exact reasons.

>since oxygen is invariably going to mix with the lift gas in the event of a puncture.

Apparently it's not *too* bad; the upper explosive limit for Hydrogen/Oxygen mix is 75% hydrogen or so, which is pretty good. I've been toying with the idea of emergency systems that'll either start sucking the hydrogen out of the compromised gas compartment and into small cylinders (which could also be the buoyancy control system; just make it dual-use,) or some highly-pressurized canisters of an inert gas like nitrogen that can be released to rapidly force all the hydrogen out if the composition falls below the upper explosive limit. Apparently the LEL is only 4% for hydrogen, so maybe just pumping more hydrogen into the gas bag from emergency canisters would be smarter.

>Just say Edison / Tesla / Baron Von Zeppelin invented them, and they get a wash.

No need to get lazy, I think. The engineering solutions were definitely there - it was just a matter of cost-effectiveness and public trust, at the time. Airships are making a comeback for those same reasons, and modern technology is, for the most part, just reducing construction costs; not doing anything they couldn't have done in the 30s had they wished to.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_safety#Ignition

So this seems to be the key to it:

>"Hydrogen-air mixtures can ignite with very low energy input, 1/10 that required igniting a gasoline-air mixture.

So it's extremely easy to get your ass lit up with it. On the other hand,

>"The flammability limits based on the volume percent of hydrogen in air at 14.7 psia (1 atm, 101 kPa) are 4.0 and 75.0. The flammability limits based on the volume percent of hydrogen in oxygen at 14.7 psia (1 atm, 101 kPa) are 4.0 and 94.0."
>"The limits of detonability of hydrogen in air are 18.3 to 59 percent by volume"[6]

So with the ratios of natural earth air considered, you need to keep your hydrogen content in the gasbag above 59 percent to avoid going boom. Seems like having extra hydrogen to flood it with would be the go-to solution.

>Seems like having extra hydrogen to flood it with would be the go-to solution.

One caveat, though: any emergency container of hydrogen is going to be vulnerable to enemy fire, as well. Even assuming it's armored, it's still going to be a big tank of hydrogen sitting on your airship with the potential for blowing up. The contingency is nice, but perhaps having a shit-ton of helium ready to flood the tanks, while still supplying lift, would be an even safer option.

That would work too, and it'd be a good place to use it. (For the hydrogen tanks, if you place them *inside* the hydrogen gas-bags, there shouldn't be a risk of explosion.)

>if you place them *inside* the hydrogen gas-bags

Well, what's the point of redundant systems if they're in the same place as the systems they're backing up? They'd be getting hit by the same bullets that the main bags are catching.

Presumably they're rather more compact as well as having thicker sides.

If your lift cells are below 59 percent lifting gas, a potential explosion is probably the least of your worries.

In any case, lift cells aren't kept under pressure, but they are *massive*. A few bullet-sized holes in a cell containing hundreds of cubic feet of hydrogen would barely be noticed. It'd take hours for enough oxygen to enter (remember, there's no pressure differential forcing the air in) to cause a fire.

During WWI, Zeppelins were known for being able to take thousands of rounds--even incendiary rounds--and still make it home.

I'm not sure pressure tanks of hydrogen are a good idea. If you start pumping hydrogen under pressure into your lift cells, you're going to naturally end up spewing some of it back out the holes, which is a lot more likely to cause a fire. Maybe flush the cell with Nitrogen if you *have* to flush it. I'm not convinced it'd even be a problem though.

Why not have a composite gas-bag where the outermost cells are lined with helium, and the inner cells contain more efficient hydrogen?

Fund it.

I actually wonder what effect this would have. Would the denser helium work to contain the hydrogen in the event both bags were punctured? The wouldn't react together, I should think.

youtube.com/watch?v=fWMnEoqX_v0

The fuck? I made this exact same post months ago down to the exact wording and picture.

What the fuck is happening?

Flying goblins.
Give them hang gliders or, my personal favorite, pedal powered planes.
>inb4 mah physics in mah fantasy

What was that old old dream cast rpg where you were a pirate on an airship or some junk. Now I want to play that

The differing densities would play havoc at higher pressures, both atmospheric and kinetic. The gas bag would need to be ridiculously high tensile on the inner envelope to accommodate for an outer - only puncture, so that it doesn't just rupture anyways.

Also the upper areas of the bags would rub due to the helium sitting slightly lower.

Airship interior essentials? Have a library?

Good views from the bridge are paramount.

>Flying goblins.

...

I would give my left nut to have that original airship set, in my hands now.

Doing some concept art on a culture of people who despite having a mostly bronze age level of advancement- Have managed to create hot air balloons and as a result flying galley blimps.

However this culture are predominantly merchants, so said airships are primarily designed holding cargo whilst maintaining flight rather than for military use.

Designs are focused on utility and visual appeal while holding enough space to stock tons of passengers and cargo? Guild merchants don't own a building, they own the entire airship and anything and anyone riding it is both their responsibility and are under the guild's diction?

I like the thought of it.

...

How do you justify airships in your typical D&D setting? What does it change, society wise?

How do you justify a world with airships but without fighter craft and other airplanes?

Yes except the concept of a "guild" is lost on them.

They pay taxes to the King and as a result aren't arrested by the army for unlawful commerce.

I dig them. Have a pet setting I'm working on right now that involves airships and floating continents as well as kemono.

Not obsolete son. Sailing ships are so very, very cheaper. Not to mention it's much easier keeping afloat with massively heavy cargo on a medium like water, than midway in the sky.

If airships become a thing in a fantasy setting (most others have normal planes which are more standard) then sailing ships still have a massive role. The infrastructure to use airships is likely only available to very wealthy cities, restricting their regular use to only advanced civilisations. But people've been using boats of some form for a long time, so every port town and village has docks.

Airhsips are undercutting the navel shipping biz, expanding the boundaries of exploration, and dramatically changing an ongoing war. Fucking dwarves, with their metal magic-tech ships.

Also the tech is rather new and undergoing an awkward "we still think in terms of naval ships but form is beginning to follow more practical functions". Ships currently look like flying boats but are starting to lose boat features and adapt to life in the air.

...

...

I've got a setting where they are exclusively used by a reclusive nomadic society, the shattered remnants of a more technological society in the past (I know, I know, SUPER original). They're super limited in terms of carrying capacity, so when outsiders do make use of them, they are chartered as fast couriers and exploration ships.

As long as they are functional dirigibles with realistic design - fine by me.
The moment they start running on nonsensoleum or are literal ships sailing in the air - fuck this shit.

Pic related for you

Let's see... First and foremost - if fuel is an issue, airships win. Second, remember how there was vulcanic eruption in Iceland and plane flights were suspended? Third, if time is not an issue, but travelling distance is, dirigibles win by vast margin. Fourth, airships are great at mapping and exploring, since you have the advantage of high vintage point and ability to cross all terrain, while slow enough to make basic measurements on the way. Fifth, building an airship is considerably easier than building an airplane.

You got that straight.

CL got in trouble with the law. The law that says when you drop a load of 200 tons, you suddenly have 200 tons of lift left over. So you go shooting for the ionosphere, and you have no brakes.

That law needs to be repealed before we see zeppelins for heavy cargoes in the skies.

That's not how zeppelins work.

For cargo, you land.

For a crane, that's a bit harder, but it's not especially hard to use engines to work against buoyancy - there has been at least one proof of concept hybrid airship (the lifting gas took the weight of the ship and half the load, the aerodynamic lift from the propellers took the other half) crane, though it wasn't on the magnitude of 200 tons.

Pic not related to that, but also a modern hybrid airship, the Airlander 10

Its currently the largest aircraft in the world, with 10 refering to the payload in tons, and there are plans for a "50" version if all goes well with it.
The resemblance to an arse has been noted, a lot.

My setting is kind of taking place during a bit of a renaissance mixed with age of exploration as a side effect of something that made long distance travel for a long time dangerous is now gone and magic has been 'rediscovered', so airships are just part of the new wave of cool shit being created because new mages and scholars are coming together and saying "what's cool shit our ancestors didn't have when magic was around that we do have? Then how do we mix the two?"

At the moment, airships primarily rely on dwarven cavorite to remain aloft and are using 'wing sails' to move.

Well, I don't. "Fighters" do come in the form of small gliders that can detach from the main airship and fly around. They're normally used to drop payloads on enemies and other ships as cannons are too heavy and smaller firearms are basically matchlocks (something like the Puckle Gun is in the works and was immediately considered but is considered 'impractical' for the time.

gliders don't use cavorite to remain aloft cavorite, without a lot of expensive fiddling and having someone constantly work on it, is 'kinetically static'. Thus, it floats and can support things because it basically won't move without some greater force applied to it.

The whole process of hooking up cavorite to a full airship is a very delicate process of balancing weight support versus the force need to move it. This is not helped that cavorite, as a material, is brittle. So military experts already note that a valid tactic to defeat an airship is the destroy its "Cavorite ballasts"

All in all, airships have yet to make a major impact and are more considered prototype novelties being made to test applicability to things like transportation, exploration, and military functions. But many are seeing massive potential.

>You will never play a game set in the Mortal Engines universe

Dystopian Wars has all the airships you could want. Even Polish Winged Hussar themed ones.

I'm planning on running a game in which the PCs are in charge of a small airship flotilla. Is there any good system to run that?

That's the one with London on wheels, right?

Yeah, inter-city transit is through lighter-than air flight, though other flying machines come into being later in the series.

There's also a flying city of Airhaven, like Bioshock's Columbia

But that's 3.5 Spelljammer.

>A new challenger approaches.

Do you have tiers?

It is acceptable if they land in water.

I like big butts and i cannot lie, you other brothers can denigh....

Renault has had a go at designing one with a view to maybe racing them like yachts.

youtube.com/watch?v=5JJ6C0Sp76c

...

...

Explain further

>It'd take hours for enough oxygen to enter (remember, there's no pressure differential forcing the air in) to cause a fire.

But it wouldn't take long to create a small zone where fire was possible, and if there was still an ignition source present, like the incendiary bullet that created the hole or some burning envelop, you could cause a small fire.

This then create a temperature differential, which creates a spot of high pressure. If this is inside your lift envelop, you are about to have a bad time.

Then there is also Bernoulli's Principle to worry about; a moving fluid has a lower pressure than a static fluid, so if the airship is moving, or is stationary and a wind is blowing across it, there is going to be some loss of lifting gas to the resulting pressure difference.

That was made from an aluminum alloy, though, which is going to be of questionable value as armor against just about any vehicle-mounted weapon. For reference, a .50 BMG round can fully penetrate 19mm of armor steel at half a kilometer. The only way you might be able to get enough is to play the numbers and drive the surface-to-area ratio way down by making the airship enormous; this is one of the few places where the square-cube law works in your favor.

Use helium

The USA is the largest producer of helium in the world and was storing its helium for its own fleet which is why the Hindenburg used hydrogen instead of helium.

And then the Hindenburg exploded and those plans were scrapped. The helium reserves were kep until congress forced the dod to release them in the 90s and here we are.

...

...

...

No, fuck you, I almost forgot about those car/lesbians, seriously, what the fuck. The show sort of made sense on a grand level after I finished it, this just didn't at any level.

...

...

...

...

This and the one above are by Albert Robida, a 19th century French artist.

...

...

...

...

Sir you must be mistaken. That there is Eberron at it's purest greatness.

I'm a sucker for fantasy settings where the world is fragmented into a bunch of small but habitable rocks and people have to rely on various kludged together aircraft to traverse it.

...

The show in question being?

He wasn't complaining about people putting airships in D&D (at least it doesn't come off that way in his comment), simply how would one implement them in a way that might be satisfactory

Airships are great. I'm thinking of implementing them in my pseudo-medieval-without-gunpowder-industrial-revolution setting, not sure if it really works, but I'd like to try without it feeling contrived

Explosion is a minor concern, any kind of fire and that hydrogen is going to burn crazy hot. I'm sure you've seen the Hindenburg film, that was hydrogen fire. Also in the 30's auto cannon were being placed into aircraft. The Me 109 had a 20mm in the nose and 2 .51 machineguns or a 30mm in the nose and 2 20mm in the wings. The P 39 had a 37mm cannon in the nose and 4 .50 machine guns. The P 38 had a 20mm and 4 .50's in the nose, and also carried rockets. If zeplins had been a thing that stuck around there would have been a lot more and bigger cannon to take them out. In WWII a B-25 was modified to house a 75mm autocannon. I love Crimson Skies, but real life just kills it.

Airship in our setting is a luxury....cost a lot of coins but can get you anywhere in any town/destination you want to go.

Also because our GM didnt have some flying monsters saves from low flying avian and medium size insects. And birds are docile as cat and also migratory/territorial dependent

I like them.
Im running a game of Airship Pirates, even.