Hey Veeky Forums, should a flying battleship be treated similar to a boat when it comes to maneuvering about...

Hey Veeky Forums, should a flying battleship be treated similar to a boat when it comes to maneuvering about? Or do you absolutely require engines out to the sides all up and down the vessel?

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If it's fantasy? Handwave it away and go by rule of cool. If you want realism then it's either blimps and other light materials, or flat out having to use shittons of fuel to keep the engines up so they can move slowly and not fall, or some kinda tech to allow them to ignore gravity without being aerodynamic and moving fast.

I already got the handwaving bit done, world's a bit more radioactive than ours in the right ways so as to make helium abundant. I'm trying to figure out how I should design the ships, and I can't decide on an engine design.

Mostly, I don't want to place them out to the sides like zeppelins traditionally have, but I still want the thing to look atleast remotely capable of actually being able to fly. I want it this way because of the dieselpunk nature of the setting.

Then ya can just go for some thrusters on the bottom and sides. Maybe big or small depending on the aesthetic you want. Especially if you're not going for realism that'll be close enough to do the whole slow moving airship thing. Looks like it'd work in the air so that's all ya need. It isn't like most of your players are going to be aeronatical engineers or NASA employees.

If ya wanted realism? Then you'd be in big trouble.

Maybe antigrav if you want. Slap some glowy shit on the bottom and say it floats and allows heavy objects to float around. Then it lets you design whatever ya want and slap engines wherever you want because you have your mcguffin flying ships justified.

I kinda wanted to keep the look of the big propellers, with things like jet thrusters showing up way later. Any ideas on that?

For propellers you can make them like a big helicopter basically. Basically take whatever big ship you want, put a few propellers and it'll have the look of being able to float or move slow due to generating lift. I'm not sure of the real world physics, but it would look feasible.

Because if you aren't going for realism you really can use cartoon logic and have any plane/ship you want with engines or propellers slapped on in a way that looks good to you and say it works. And obviously with a propeller, if it's a big ship it moves slower due to weight, with smaller ones being able to move around faster. That's probably about as good as you'll get for trying to make airboats without just saying fuck it and say it works because fuck you and not thinking too hard about it.

And for engines you can make them rotatable and treat them like the propellers. Big ass ships slow, smaller fast.

Fair enough. What do you think about armor on them? None at all, some, loaded down...?

Sorry for the twenty questions btw, but I've been trying to figure this shit out for far too long by myself and decided I could use some help.

Well, that depends on your preferences. The aesthetic you want. Realism is already kinda out the window, so adding armor or taking away armor isn't gonna make or break anything. At those sizes a little extra weight isn't gonna do shit. And I guess it also depends on the era you want to emulate. Swashbuckling pirates in the air? No armor. If you want more industrial revolution types? Then ya got armor all over. Modern? Ya get the idea. But it's your setting. If you want pirates in airboats with armor? Go for it. Players generally don't give a shit about how things work in the game. As long as ya make it seem feasible (and often times ya don't even have to do that), and it's cool, you're good. Going by the rule of cool does really work because that's why people play these kinds of games. And if they wanted realism they wouldn't be playing games with airboats, and if they are that autistic then tell them it's a universe with different laws of physics.

It seems like you're doing more worrying about the world than ya have to. Just do what seems cool and have fun.

Well, I do worry too much anyway. Thanks for the help, user. Much appreciated.

No problem. As long as ya make shit cool and you like it and have investment in it (a dm giving a shit about his world helps a lot), you'll do fine. The hard part will be giving them shit to do or places to go. I always found plot points harder than world building. If ya have that? No sweat.

You can have then figure out how to supercharge the antigrav stuff better or whatever, so they need less big fans, and at the same time engine technology can advance.

Like they discovered ductued fan principles early just because they wanted to keep people from hitting the fuck huge propellers, then they got started on high by pass turbines.

You know, I hadn't even thought of ducted fans...

Just saw the thread, there's a few designs that might work if you want it a little bit grounded in reality.

Obviously there lighter than air. Blimps, zeppelin, the like. Your best option for boat like movement.

There's hovercraft types like in Avatar or the Captain america movies.

Or you could do a giant aircraft like the Aigaion in Ace Combat.

Hey friend, I've been working on an airship setting for a few years now.

I decided I like props and maybe even thrusters as well too, but I hate blimps or explosive gas lift systems.

Since my world is post-post apocalypse, and ancient tech is abundant, they rig up rods of material found in ancient lev-elevators and service bots that when charged with electricity provide... negative weight so to say, or rather large amounts of life. So every ship has a rod that requires a decent amount of power to keep generating lift.

Rods are dangerous and produce tremendous amounts of heat, therefor you usually need a water-cooled rod casing, some ships even using airflow during highspeeds to supplement the cooling.

To actually PROPEL the ship however they still rely on props and motors, as the rod only provides straight up lift at a degree depending on energy input.

This guy also has some really cool airship drawings. Just my style.

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These are fucking cool designs. Commissioned art for your setting?

no, no,

Just some guy I found on DA who had similar ideas to me. His creations are actually lifted by organic float sacs, which is a bit weird to me, but the ships look cool AF

aoiwaffle0608.deviantart.com/

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What I heard from a guy doing boat-engineering is that it's almost literally the same as aeroplane-engineering. So the basics should be extremely similar, with the differences being that one should be kept in the air while the other one shouldn't sink
For blimps I imagine it being even more similar, but I wouldn't have any idea myself

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Have a few heavy props or jets, either at the back, or in the center out the sides like blimps,

Then have wings that can be angled - like a submarine. Want to go up? angle wings up at the front, want to go down? angle wings down at the front.
Then all you need is a rudder and you're good to go. You can adjust roll by having the left and right wings individually controlled - so you could tilt one to roll one way, and tilt the other to roll the opposite way. You could tilt both in opposite directions for a quick roll.

They would essentially move around like a submarine in the sky - with turn arcs and constant forward motion.

You're asking if a craft designed six-axis movement moves like a craft designed for four. I'm sure it won't trigger anyone at your table.

Got with ducted fans then, look up the leviathan airship game for how they might look.

Elevators wouldnt have enough authority to roll a battleship, there would need to be large traditional wings too, just for somewhere to put ailerons.

OK so reading through the rest of the thread and seeing what you want and that the ducted fans were already suggested, I highly recommend you give this a read through. It's the leviathans backstory primer, the game seems to have died but the background is sweet.

monstersinthesky.com/downloads/E-CAT31000A_Leviathans Gazetteer_ForWeb.pdf

One answer to "airships how" that's frequently overlooked is just giving the world a much denser atmosphere.

A denser atmosphere means more drag, which shits on planes and go-fast, but also means that "lighter than air" isn't nearly as high a hurdle.

It's magic.

do you mean 3 axis and 2 axis?

Depends, are you talking atmospheric or non-atmospheric flight?