kurigan

A proposal

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Why, that's great! We've already got 3 out of 4 necessary players! Now, we just need a fourth volunteer! Phred, Admiral Croissant, cb4, Bart... you all made contributions, wouldn't you like to try the game? :shark:

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Ramming wasn't THAT outdated. (John Paul Johns rammed the Serapis and boarded her and took the ship.

Very true, but ramming to sink rather than ramming to board was. Running into another sailing ship generally didn't do much damage beyond messing up the paintwork and the entanglement of the rigging. A galley could actually ram with a reasonable expectation of sinking its target because it had a dedicated ram and because galleys were very lightly built compared to a sailing ship so that they would be light enough to be rowed at high speed.

The only time I can imagine ramming as a strategy for one sailing ship to sink another would be in the event that the ramming ship is so much larger and heavier that it can ride up over the beam of the target and break it in half. I believe that large sailing ships engaged with galleys would ram them if the opportunity arose, as they could crush them or at least break their oars and cripple them.

Why, that's great! We've already got 3 out of 4 necessary players! Now, we just need a fourth volunteer! Phred, Admiral Croissant, cb4, Bart... you all made contributions, wouldn't you like to try the game? :shark:

Unfortunately, my ship is by no means complete and ready for battle, otherwise I should certainly accept. I think at this point it should float, but it has no decks, no guns, no standing or running rigging, and no crew, so I think it would make a sad account of itself. But it is actively being worked on! :pir_laugh2:

Edited by cb4

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Unfortunately, my ship is by no means complete and ready for battle, otherwise I should certainly accept. I think at this point it should float, but it has no decks, no guns, no standing or running rigging, and no crew, so I think it would make a sad account of itself. But it is actively being worked on! :pir_laugh2:

Too bad, but it's good to hear that you're working on it. I am lookin' forward to the next update of that beauty she already is.

I've made to additional maps to choose from:

This one is "Big Cam's Atoll" and features four hideouts (veery tiny, might change that) that can belong to factions

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Big Cams Atoll von HMSCentaur auf Flickr

This one is "Captain Green Hair's Resort" and features two faction-trading posts and the big harbour in the middle where Captain Green Hair resides - would you dare taking this one? :pir_laugh2:

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Green hairs resort von HMSCentaur auf Flickr

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Without guns the estimated maximum speed was given as 10.2 knots. I'm not sure if the full hull part was taken into account here as Open Office can't seem to make heads or tails of the radio button for that.

I found that adding the guns reduced the ship's speed to 5.5 knots, but that the ship's speed went up immediately if I then added more weight. I was able to add more weight up to 10 kg and still get more speed (up to 8.3 knots) that way. At 15 kg the speed starts dropping again.

A certain sized vessel can only handle a certain amount of armament before its sailing qualities are affected. Too much armament causes a vessel to hog, which then causes the vessel to move slower. Some hogging occurred in almost all vessels, since most captains and pirates liked their vessels armed as much as possible. However, their vessels also did not go as fast as they were designed to.

[Nerd Stuff]

From the data that I've obtained, a fighting ship has average of 8.7% of its tonnage in armament and ammunition, and a standard deviation of 2%. Almost all fighting vessels are then within two standard deviations of the average weight in armament or from 4.7% to 12.7%. This figure is extremely consistent for all vessels frigate sized and smaller. I don't have much data on the large ship-of-the-lines, but I assumed the average and standard deviation continues its consistency for these larger vessels. There is a hogging factor worked into the speed formula that slows down vessels that are over armed for their tonnage. The "hogging factor" is linear and when a vessel has 12.7% of its tonnage in cannon and shot, the vessel receives a 20% penalty in speed and the hogging increases as the percentage of cannon increases. I am not how accurate the hogging factor is, but I feel that it is definitely needed.[/Nerd Stuff]

The hogging factor is put in to help inhibit too many cannon on a ship that would really not be able to handle at its original speed. If you feel that the hogging factor is too much, I can revise it so that its impact is less. If ship has way too many cannon for its relative size, then the hogging factor can have a very large effect on its speed.

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A suggestion for shoal/reef damage: what about using the number of guns carried as the number of hull points damage you would take?

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A certain sized vessel can only handle a certain amount of armament before its sailing qualities are affected. Too much armament causes a vessel to hog, which then causes the vessel to move slower. Some hogging occurred in almost all vessels, since most captains and pirates liked their vessels armed as much as possible. However, their vessels also did not go as fast as they were designed to.

[Nerd Stuff]

From the data that I've obtained, a fighting ship has average of 8.7% of its tonnage in armament and ammunition, and a standard deviation of 2%. Almost all fighting vessels are then within two standard deviations of the average weight in armament or from 4.7% to 12.7%. This figure is extremely consistent for all vessels frigate sized and smaller. I don't have much data on the large ship-of-the-lines, but I assumed the average and standard deviation continues its consistency for these larger vessels. There is a hogging factor worked into the speed formula that slows down vessels that are over armed for their tonnage. The "hogging factor" is linear and when a vessel has 12.7% of its tonnage in cannon and shot, the vessel receives a 20% penalty in speed and the hogging increases as the percentage of cannon increases. I am not how accurate the hogging factor is, but I feel that it is definitely needed.[/Nerd Stuff]

The hogging factor is put in to help inhibit too many cannon on a ship that would really not be able to handle at its original speed. If you feel that the hogging factor is too much, I can revise it so that its impact is less. If ship has way too many cannon for its relative size, then the hogging factor can have a very large effect on its speed.

I definitely agree that something like that is needed... I do not know what you are using for gun weights, but I'll make a couple of estimates.

If I use the upper limit for a 9lb cannon as 31 hundredweight, and allow 100 shots of ammunition per gun, that gives the minimum tonnage of a ship carrying 20 guns (including armament) as 287 long tons.

If I use the 25 hundredweight number, it is 245 long tons. These seem highly reasonable numbers to me.

However, the ship is in minifig illusion scale, which means that it is rather smaller than it should be. My ship as a waterline length of 80 studs, which is quite long as lego ships go, yet this only comes out as 75 feet, which is short for a ship. At this ratio minifigs are also 4' 8" ! If you assume that minifigs are 5' 10" then you get 90-ish feet instead. I can easily see a ship of that size having a sufficient displacement to come in at 250-ish tons.

I really think you're stuck between a rock and a hard place when calculating weight. My ship is very strong (I'm sure you saw my hogging test), and very light (coming out as 800 g, and 60 tons), but I can build a very heavy, dense ship, and simply by building it I am asserting that it floats in the world of lego, and you cannot say otherwise, even if all your calculations tell you that it should sink like a stone. My very heavy, dense ship can therefore support a very large number of heavy weapons, without any changes in its sailing qualities, being so heavy already. I can also make it extremely long and thin, and although structurally unsound and perhaps unstable it will be determined to be very fast.

There's no easy way to deal with this - each lego ship necessarily occupies its own universe and you must come up with some way to compare them so that they can interact. I think that for some metrics (waterline length, beam, sail area) the comparisons are valid as long as the model is not too simplistic (currently the ideal ship is infinitely long, infinitely narrow, and has infinitely large sails) but weight is a nasty problem because you can't easily convert from lego to oak, and even if you could, you can't measure the structural strength of a ship. Whatever you decide to make the conversion ratio, it will cause all ships that are built lighter than the ideal to be too light for their guns, and all ships that are heavier than the ideal to simply be too heavy. My response in this situation would be to ballast my ship as heavily as possible or simply lie about her weight.

I think you should simply leave weight out entirely and use the dimensions of the ship and sails to determine speed and hitpoints. You might need a few extra measurements to do this but I think it's reasonable. This would mean that those ships that look crammed full of guns would be penalized, while those that simply don't weigh very much will not be. It will also prevent someone from creating a long, thin stone that has an insane amount of guns and sails and getting the best of hitpoints, firepower, and speed.

If you wanted to differentiate between heavily and lightly built ships you could make this an adjustable attribute that lets someone trade hitpoints and ability to bear armament for speed (within reason). By doing this I could build a relatively large ship, under-arm her, and then say that she is lightly built, and I get something in return for my reduced armament. Or, I could overgun her somewhat but say she is heavily built, so she'd be extra tough but a bit of slug. Simply adding sail area wouldn't help me, because without changing the ship's dimensions she would be overpressed.

If this post is a little disjointed, it is because I've been thinking the problem over as I've been writing it so it has evolved with my thinking.

Edited by cb4

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First of all, cb4, I would like to compliment you on your discussion style. While your comments in this thread have somehow been met with disapproval up to now, you are staying very focused and polite in a discussion that's now between rule-huggers, naval-fans and number knowers. I like this :pir_laugh2:

While I think that Phred's numbers are undisputed by all of us, you are right in the point that the translation from ship to Lego-ship is somewhat not entirely accurate. While I do know that this gives room for unbalanced games and even cheating, I also see that pirates-fans on this forum are amongst the most accurate and.. let's say conservative folks - I think of this as a positive asset as most of us would not make inaccurate ships or employ heavily unrealistic building-styles just to win a game of R&S.

Including the weight will give us a better and more individual picture of the ship that is brought to battle and therefore I conclude: Even if including the weight does NOT give us an accurate translation into naval construction details, it DOES give us a good insight on the MOC itself. As this game is about sending MOCs into battle, I vote for keeping the weights. After all, it would be up to the game host to decide whether a ship would be fit to combat the opponent or whether it should better find another, better suited opponent.

But I would like to hear the opinions of the others on that matter!

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I vote for keeping the weights. After all, it would be up to the game host to decide whether a ship would be fit to combat the opponent or whether it should better find another, better suited opponent.

If CB4 doesn't want the hogging factor, and you would like to keep it, I could lessen Hogging factor. This would still cause over-gunned ships to be slowed, but not as much. As I've mentioned already, I don't know for sure how much of a factor hogging has on speed, so lessening it is not a big deal.

Perhaps you can add a 25% defense extra to ships with tumblehome. In the age of sails, tumblehome was utilized because it could make boarding difficult. Also, the ramming idea seems a little outdated for this game. We aren't using Roman triremes or Viking longboats, we are using galleons, frigates and brigs in the 16th to 19th century. Ramming was already an obsolete concept at that time.

Well, as it was also used to stabilise the vessel's centre of balance and went with almost every constructed ship of the time, it seems a little redundant to me to include this. But let's gather some more opinions on that theme.

According to the Wikipedia article on Tumblehome, it appears you two are both correct. :pir-grin:

Tumblehome was common on wooden warships for centuries. In the era of oared combat ships it was quite common' date=' placing the oar ports as far abeam as possible. This also made it more difficult to board by force, as the ships would come to contact at their widest points, with the decks some distance apart. The narrowing of the deck above this point made the boat more stable by lowering the weight above the waterline, which is one of the reasons it remained common during the age of cannon-armed ships. In addition, the sloping sides of a tumblehome ship increased the effective thickness of the hull versus flat horizontal trajectory gunfire (a straight line through faced more material to penetrate) and also increased the likelihood of a shell striking the hull being deflected- much the same reasons that later tank armor was sloped.[/quote']

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So here's the scenario I envision where the weight becomes a problem. Nobody wants to exclude or discriminate based on building techniques - the game should be open to anyone who wants to build a ship.

Two MOCers create frigates, both of 150 studs length, 40 studs beam, both of 38 guns, with 18 pdrs. Both are ship-rigged with approximately the same sail area.

Now, as a newcomer to the game I would assume that these two ships would meet on equal terms.

However, it turns out that ship A weighs half as much as ship B. It so happens that based on the arbitrary weight conversion ratio, ship B is the ideal weight for bearing 38 18 pdrs. Ship A, based on this conversion ratio, is far too light. Ship A is penalized and ends up being slower, and also having half as many hitpoints. This is despite being entirely comparable to Ship A in all other respects than weight.

So we are now to tell the MOCer that has created ship A, which is comparable in all respects other than weight to ship B, that his ship is entirely inferior and that he should either remove half the armament, heavily ballast his ship, or simply deceive us about his ship's weight? All three options seem ridiculous to me.

Weighing MOCs is error prone, may not be possible for everyone, and cannot be independently verified. Anyone can count studs, even in a photograph. Lego MOCs are really about illusion, and the different ways people come up with to create those illusions are what makes them great. How much a MOC weighs has never been part of that illusion, and I don't think it should be used to to calculate the most fundamental property in the game, as it will always punish someone.

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Why, that's great! We've already got 3 out of 4 necessary players! Now, we just need a fourth volunteer! Phred, Admiral Croissant, cb4, Bart... you all made contributions, wouldn't you like to try the game? :shark:

I would love to play but I do not have a ship :(

The only pirate thing I build till now is my Admirals Barge, I cloud fill it with swords and guns and weigh it ;) but I think it wouldn't be a fair mach against any other moc ship on here.

I think I have to agree with cb4's last post about the weight, if you brick build your full hull or use hull parts for your waterline moc is quite a difference in weight, wile it can be the same type of ship.

but I think it's better for me to leave this weight discussion to the people who have more knowledge about it ;)

Bart

Edition;

just to see what happens I entered the particulars of my barge in the Excel sheet and I think there is an error in it.

LAO = 24 std => 22,5 ft

BAO = 7 std => 6,6 ft

weight = 0,3 kg => 22,8 tons

the length and beam are correct but the weight !?! out of experience I know a barge like this weighs more like 2 tons.

and the weight gives my barge a draft of 13 ft.! so only the mast tip is above the whater level.

if I manipulate the weight to 2 tons it comes to 1,2 ft that seems more correct.

my sprit sail gives it a speed of about 4 knots in both weights and that seems correct to me,

then I come to the next part, what about the oars?

out of personal experience I know that you can reach a cruising speed of 5 knots and up to 7 in a Sprint. Depending on the wind and waves and current this got influenced of course

Bart

Edited by Bart

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Weighing MOCs is error prone, may not be possible for everyone, and cannot be independently verified.
If you really don't want weight, you could always use displacement :pir_laugh2: and watch your ship sink to the bottom of your bathtub!

In my opinion, weight is used to reduce the emphasis on hydronamics. We already have length and beam which are factors of how streamlined your ship is. That's quite enough hydronamics. The problem is: 'If not weight, what then?' I think that hydronamics would be the only alternative but the measuring system would not be as simple as using weight alone. Tedious and complex measurments would have to be made and a method to translate these numbers to speed.

may not be possible for everyone
Actually, a set of scales is all you need to measure the weight of your ship. I think we can all safely presume that most, if not all members in Eurobricks have weight scales in their homes, so the weighting thing isn't a problem. Edited by Cap'n Crunch

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If you really don't want weight, you could always use displacement :pir_laugh2: and watch your ship sink to the bottom of your bathtub!

This is my point exactly - some MOCs would sink like stones, and some might actually float (if they were watertight). We don't in general build MOCs with the intention that they should float, so nobody cares how much they weigh - but somehow we do for this game?

In my opinion, weight is used to reduce the emphasis on hydronamics. We already have length and beam which are factors of how streamlined your ship is. That's quite enough hydronamics. The problem is: 'If not weight, what then?' I think that hydronamics would be the only alternative but the measuring system would not be as simple as using weight alone. Tedious and complex measurments would have to be made and a method to translate these numbers to speed.

I do know what you mean, but length and beam are intentional. Nobody - to my knowledge - builds MOCs with a target weight in mind.

Actually, a set of scales is all you need to measure the weight of your ship. I think we can all safely presume that most, if not all members in Eurobricks have weight scales in their homes, so the weighting thing isn't a problem.

Well, I don't have scientific scales. I think there is a bathroom scale somewhere, but the uncertainty on a bathroom scale is about 30% the weight of my MOC. There's every reason to make up a number instead.

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I'm new to this discussion, but reading the past page or so on the "hogging" problem, it seems the rule is to prevent people from overarming their ships. If so, why not calculate the hogging simply based on armament? This way you could avoid penalizing based on weight. For example, for every midsection you can have say 2 guns per gundeck, and any extras would be counted against the speed?

I might have missed something/completely misunderstood so I'll leave this to those more familiar with ships than me.

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Well, you've all inspired me to do a bizarre experiment. With the help of some cling-wrap, I made my WIP watertight, and she does, in fact, float. It seems like she draws about 5 studs of water. Apologies for the bad pictures, but bathtub shots are difficult and perilous. I think she's slightly by the stern but the trim is actually quite good. I really get a sense now of just how low in the water xebecs really were.

The ship is only going to get heavier and really I don't think I'd want her to be heavier than this if I wanted her to float properly with a full load.

The exercise is ridiculous in every sense, but I think it illustrates my point. You wouldn't expect most MOCs to float, and by the same logic it doesn't make sense to make them adhere to a narrow weight range in order to participate in a game. MOCs are about looks, so I think that it makes much more sense to base attributes on physical dimensions, not mass.

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Nice experiment cb4,

Just a photo-technic note, maybe you could have added a die to the water to get clearer pictures.

But never the less it is quite obvious that the Xebec is already on its design draft (if you compare it with the drawings cb4 posted here, while it certainly is not yet finished and so will gain more weight.

But this problem is not only with Lego, it occurs on every model build,

An example;

you have a beam 1x2x10 meters

you scale it 1:10

then you have a beam 0,1x0,2x1 meter

But the Volume doesn't change according to that scale

1x2x10 = 20 m³

0,1x0,2x1 = 0,02 m³

The scale used for the Volume then becomes 1:1000

When building (non Lego) ship models (that you wish to float) you have to use very lightweight equipment to give your model the same draft as the real thing (to scale) because the Volume of the underwater part of the ship (known as Displacement) is much smaller and thus the floating capacity is less.

After writing the above I see we have a problem or we made ourselfs a problem, but I do not know how to solve it, maybe I got a bright idea sometime and I'll post it here.

Maybe base the hitpoints on type of ship, size, no. of masts, etcetera

Bart

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Nice experiment cb4,

Just a photo-technic note, maybe you could have added a die to the water to get clearer pictures.

But never the less it is quite obvious that the Xebec is already on its design draft (if you compare it with the drawings cb4 posted here, while it certainly is not yet finished and so will gain more weight.

You're absolutely right, afterwards I thought to myself that I should have thrown a barrel or something into the water, but I wasn't thinking. If I do it again I'll make the water level much higher so I can hold the camera more steadily and do something like that so it's easier to see where the surface actually is.

But this problem is not only with Lego, it occurs on every model build,

An example;

you have a beam 1x2x10 meters

you scale it 1:10

then you have a beam 0,1x0,2x1 meter

But the Volume doesn't change according to that scale

1x2x10 = 20 m³

0,1x0,2x1 = 0,02 m³

The scale used for the Volume then becomes 1:1000

When building (non Lego) ship models (that you wish to float) you have to use very lightweight equipment to give your model the same draft as the real thing (to scale) because the Volume of the underwater part of the ship (known as Displacement) is much smaller and thus the floating capacity is less.

After writing the above I see we have a problem or we made ourselfs a problem, but I do not know how to solve it, maybe I got a bright idea sometime and I'll post it here.

Maybe base the hitpoints on type of ship, size, no. of masts, etcetera

Bart

Yes, the square-cube law is really going to eat our lunch for any potential floating MOCs. I think after I've finished the ship I'll do the experiment again to see just where it ends up. At least we don't have to worry about Reynolds numbers!

I'm in favour of basing hitpoints and other attributes on ship dimensions and things like the number of masts, decks, etc because weights are going to vary wildly between MOCs.

Perhaps this would be useful for that sort of thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Builder%27s_Old_Measurement

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Call me a rule-hugger if you want, but I like weight better because its much simpler, no disputes, no fuss. And there still remains the problem of a way to calculate hit points and other attributes. If you are going to use no. of masts and decks et cetera, it wouldn't be much better than using weight. Sure, using the no. of masts might be a factor of speed, but a factor of hit points? LEGO ships as you said earler, are built on illusion, you can't just calculate hitpoints on no. of decks because it would mean that waterline builders would get a huge disadvantage. I stick to weight because it's the simplest way.

Edited by Cap'n Crunch

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Call me a rule-hugger if you want, but I like weight better because its much simpler, no disputes, no fuss. And there still remains the problem of a way to calculate hit points and other attributes. If you are going to use no. of masts and decks et cetera, it wouldn't be much better than using weight. Sure, using the no. of masts might be a factor of speed, but a factor of hit points? LEGO ships as you said earler, are built on illusion, you can't just calculate hitpoints on no. of decks because it would mean that waterline builders would get a huge disadvantage. I stick to weight because it's the simplest way.

Well, by decks I mean number of gun decks. Currently there's no notion of rigging damage vs hull damage. If all non-special event type damage is to the hull, there's no point in looking at the ship's rig for hitpoints. I believe that we should calculate a theoretical tonnage for a ship based on its dimensions and then use that to derive speed/hitpoints/etc.

Using physical MOC weight is really simple. Unfortunately, I don't think it's comparable between MOCs unless they're built using very similar techniques, and so using it will give one technique or another an arbitrary advantage. It gives you a very quick answer, and if you don't mind getting weird outputs where a ship that's one and a half times as big as another has half as many hitpoints, then I guess that's ok - but I think it will discourage people from playing if their ship doesn't fit the mold, so to speak.

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I have been thinking,

maybe we should first decide what number of Hit-Points we desire per type of ship

something like

barge <100

sloop 100-200

galleon 200-300

frigate 300-400

ship of the line 400>

And then from that, we build up a formula concerning things as size, masts, decks, to give the ships a specific HP value.

But before that we have to decide what types of ships we have and when a ship fits a certain type.

hmm every idea gives up new questions :S

Bart

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The primary issue I believe is the strange behavior the formula gives CB4 because his ship really is overloaded for the size of his lego model. However, his vessel is a mini-fig illusion ship, and I think the formula as it is now does not "behave" fairly for mini-fig illusion ships. When creating the hogging factor portion, I did not realize how unfairly a mini-fig illusion ship would be affected, which is not my intent. There are a significant amount of mini-fig illusion ships. If I were to remove the hogging factor completely (which is really easy to do), it would remedy the strange behavior that people like CB4 will see in their mini-fig illusion ships.

As a side note with the hogging factor removed, it will be very easy for people to overload their ships with cannon size and quantity without much of an effect upon their vessel's speed. However, I do not know how much speed is impacted when a ship is over loaded anyways. Until I find some solid data, I think it'll be fine to not consider hogging.

I will say that I do strongly believe that using the weight of the MOC should remain. Yes, the current formula is based upon actual sailing vessels, and not every builder attempts to build an exact model of a ship. I agree that people do not and should not build MOCs with a specific weight in mind. I believe that each MOC with the same guns, length, width, and sail area should not have the same speed. Everyone has different build styles, and we all build with different types of bricks available. The number of gun decks can vary on vessels with the same length and width. Those who like to build very solid, heavy models ought to be rewarded with additional hit-points with a lose of speed, and those who build very thin, light models ought to be rewarded with additional speed with a lose of hit points.

If we switch to rating style for speed and hit-points, I would have to argue that a Lego model that is a frigate built mini-fig illusion scale is not the same as a frigate built true mini-fig scale. They may have the same number of guns and speed, but I believe the larger model should definitely have more hit-points.

The portion of the formula without the hogging factor has a coefficient of determination of 0.87 compared to actual vessels, where a value of 1.0 would be a perfect formula. I think this is really good knowing that extremely vital characteristics of a sailing vessel's speed aren't even considered. These include hull design, hull smoothness, and weight distribution, which I think would be very difficult to consider in a Lego model.

To be honest, I really do not have the desire to create another formula without weight as a variable. In my many attempts to create formulas with fewer variables, I never was able to get a formula that had good accuracy with consistent behavior for each variable, such as added sail area decreasing the ship's speed once you've reached a certain point in sail area.

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The primary issue I believe is the strange behavior the formula gives CB4 because his ship really is overloaded for the size of his lego model. However, his vessel is a mini-fig illusion ship, and I think the formula as it is now does not "behave" fairly for mini-fig illusion ships. When creating the hogging factor portion, I did not realize how unfairly a mini-fig illusion ship would be affected, which is not my intent. There are a significant amount of mini-fig illusion ships. If I were to remove the hogging factor completely (which is really easy to do), it would remedy the strange behavior that people like CB4 will see in their mini-fig illusion ships.

Yes, all the evidence I've seen is that 9 pdrs aren't all that much lighter than 18 pdrs or any other long gun. Really my ship should be armed with carronades, as they were in reality very light compared to cannon. I'd like to see 4 pdrs and 6 pdrs in the game as they were the common weapons for small sloops, and most MOCs are of about that size (although most are armed with what we consider 24 pdrs!)

My ship is definitely mini-fig illusion scale, and so it is a bit too small for minifigs. I do think that your scaling factor for lengths is off, however - since minifigs come out extremely short at 4 feet 8 inches or thereabouts (assuming minifigs are intended as reference humans).

As a side note with the hogging factor removed, it will be very easy for people to overload their ships with cannon size and quantity without much of an effect upon their vessel's speed. However, I do not know how much speed is impacted when a ship is over loaded anyways. Until I find some solid data, I think it'll be fine to not consider hogging.

The truth is that it would be impossible to overarm real ships in the way that we do since it takes many men and a lot of room to serve a gun in anything like safety. Many MOCs don't have any room for recoil or anything near the crew needed to reload their weapons in good time. Right now I don't think there's any way of controlling crew size and there's no metric for serviceability of guns so a hogging factor or something like it is probably the best option.

I will say that I do strongly believe that using the weight of the MOC should remain. Yes, the current formula is based upon actual sailing vessels, and not every builder attempts to build an exact model of a ship. I agree that people do not and should not build MOCs with a specific weight in mind. I believe that each MOC with the same guns, length, width, and sail area should not have the same speed. Everyone has different build styles, and we all build with different types of bricks available. The number of gun decks can vary on vessels with the same length and width. Those who like to build very solid, heavy models ought to be rewarded with additional hit-points with a lose of speed, and those who build very thin, light models ought to be rewarded with additional speed with a lose of hit points.

In theory I agree with you, but the formula really favours heavy ships. If I enter my ship as 800 g, she makes 10.3 knots. At 10000 g, she makes 8.8 knots (both cases with no armament). The actual in-game movement numbers come out identically, so there is absolutely no point in making a ship light. Much better to fill the hold with the heaviest stuff you can find. My ship is light because I'm trying to use a historically accurate building technique as far as I can approximate it with lego, and I don't want to make my hull two plates thick and have a scantling every two studs, as it wouldn't gain me anything of value except massive part consumption. I do not think that my ship is exceptionally light by the standards of my own technique, but perhaps it is exceptionally light by other standards. I do not have a traditional lego ship to compare it with.

If we switch to rating style for speed and hit-points, I would have to argue that a Lego model that is a frigate built mini-fig illusion scale is not the same as a frigate built true mini-fig scale. They may have the same number of guns and speed, but I believe the larger model should definitely have more hit-points.

I really think that hitpoints should be based primarily on the size of a hull (but this would probably need more than a beam/length measurement). A true minifig scale ship would be much larger and would have a much larger hull.

To be honest, I really do not have the desire to create another formula without weight as a variable. In my many attempts to create formulas with fewer variables, I never was able to get a formula that had good accuracy with consistent behavior for each variable, such as added sail area decreasing the ship's speed once you've reached a certain point in sail area.

The only way you're going to get a formula that is consistent with historical numbers is by measuring in the same way that ships were measured historically. My understanding is that they would make a series of measurements to determine the submerged volume of the hull, and then use that to determine the ship's total mass. This is impractical for most MOCs as most are not waterline models.

May I ask how the scaling factor for MOC weight to scaled tons was derived? Is it arbitrary based on fitting a particular example MOC to the formula or is it based on the scaled down weight of a ship with the difference in density between ABS plastic and Oak or some other wood factored in?

Edited by cb4

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May I ask how the scaling factor for MOC weight to scaled tons was derived? Is it arbitrary based on fitting a particular example MOC to the formula or is it based on the scaled down weight of a ship with the difference in density between ABS plastic and Oak or some other wood factored in?

Unfortunately, I could not find the exact derivation of the scaled weight. I must have done it on paper, which is lost since then. I only remember using the same scale as the lengths and areas for the volumes, but I do not remember what type of conversion (if any :blush:) I used for the density between abs plastic and white oak.

As it was mentioned already, the construction style of an actual ship is completely different from how MOCs are typically created, which brings into question about just using a conversion of densities.

Your MOC that you're creating I believe is the closest to accurate construction I've ever seen. What do you think of using your vessel as a reference point for another attempt of the weight conversion? I've got a lot of data as to the length, beam, tonnage, and displacement of a variety of vessels. Your ship should be really close to at least one of these vessels.

In theory I agree with you, but the formula really favours heavy ships. If I enter my ship as 800 g, she makes 10.3 knots. At 10000 g, she makes 8.8 knots (both cases with no armament). The actual in-game movement numbers come out identically, so there is absolutely no point in making a ship light. Much better to fill the hold with the heaviest stuff you can find. My ship is light because I'm trying to use a historically accurate building technique as far as I can approximate it with lego, and I don't want to make my hull two plates thick and have a scantling every two studs, as it wouldn't gain me anything of value except massive part consumption. I do not think that my ship is exceptionally light by the standards of my own technique, but perhaps it is exceptionally light by other standards. I do not have a traditional lego ship to compare it with.

I did not realize that the favored heavy ships so much. I wonder if the formula would still favor such heavy MOCs if the weight conversion needs to be revised. :pir-look:

I really think that hitpoints should be based primarily on the size of a hull (but this would probably need more than a beam/length measurement). A true minifig scale ship would be much larger and would have a much larger hull.

I agree that hit-points should be based on the size of the hull. I would think that using weight as a basis for hit-points would provide a good enough estimate of the size of the hull, which also takes into consideration the thickness of the hull. I believe a more accurate measurement of hit-points would require too many additional measurements. :shrug_confused:

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Objectively, I'd be pretty concerned about using my MOC's weight as a basis for a realistic structural weight. While it approximates realistic construction techniques, there are a lot of compromises. From the plans that I have, I believe that the planking thickness is quite close to being correct, if 1 plate ~= 5 inches. However, it does not have nearly as many frames/stringers and other structural members as a realistic wooden model might have. For the purposes of the model, it does not need them due to lego at this scale being much, much stronger than oak at full scale. The frames that are there are much too thick, particularly at the bottom, because they need to be sufficiently sturdy and I can't just curve lego pieces - I need to build a laminated curve. The keel structure is too large, because it needs to anchor the hinges that hold the frames at the correct angle. The deck structure is reasonably accurate, but the real ship had two decks, one a convex structural deck, and the other laid directly on top of it to provide a flat surface for the guns. I have omitted the underlying curved deck for the sake of simplicity.

There's also the fact that my ship is a xebec, which is much more related to a galley than say, a carrack or caravel, and has developed through somewhat convergent evolution to start to look something like a frigate/sloop, but with lateen sails. I do know that Mediterranean ships were built much lighter than those intended for use in the open ocean and intended to engage their opponents with heavy guns at close range.

All in all, I think that the ship's frame is probably about 60% as heavy as it should be, assuming that the existing frame is heavier, yet much sparser, than a real frame. I really have no idea what percentage of the ship is frame and what percentage is planking, not having kept a part count. I also need a much more accurate measurement of my ship's total mass, including crew, guns, masts and rigging, etc. It occurs to me that the masts are probably much too light, given that they are mostly hollow.

I'm wondering, should we include stores/water/ballast stones? Should we remove the guns and crew when weighing? Clearly the guns are not as heavy as they should be, but they still weigh something.

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This discussion can go on and on and while I actually really enjoy reading all of it - which I think can be classified as nerd-alert :pir-blush: - I think we have to come to a compromise.

As we realise that the formula does not seem to satisfy the needs of all MOCs that could be thrown into the game, here does come my suggestion:

We take the total weight of the cannons used and add a standartised weight that is based on the size of the vessel. The size would be relevant in terms of that we measure the MOC, translate it into the scale of a fully rigged vessel and try to find a a known ship with roughly the same dimensions. Then we take the weight of this ship and use it in the formula. This will never be entirely accurate but takes away the disadvantages of different building techniques and focuses more on the idea of the MOC.

What do you think?

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ah Horry why did you do that, I liked reading the, ever expending, posts :pir_laugh2:;)

But if I understand you correctly you want to make a sort of table, that gives you a weight based on dimensions.

with the weights/dimensions taken from existing ships.

and to that weight we add another weight based on the number of cannons.

That sounds good to me.

Bart

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