Questions tagged [ships]
For questions relating to water-based vessels. Ships in space should use the spaceship tag.
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Way to make a sailing frigate dangerous in a semi-modern world
I need to find a way to make an age of sail type naval frigate comparable to those of rougly the 1770's (admittedly with some ''ahead of it's time'' design changes) a threat to a naval ship comparable ...
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How could iron-age ships be modified to withstand extreme storms?
Iron-age humans wish to cross an extremely stormy sea -- one that no pre-industrial vessel humans actually built could reasonably survive.
Here is a graphical guide to some hazards
These people don't ...
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Could Mermaids Tear a Warship's Planking?
I had an idea for a story, where mermaids sabotage a ship during the age of sail. I wanted to ask for advice on it, and if it makes sense. Perspective would be especially helpful, since someone told ...
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What is the danger zone of a waterfall to aircraft?
In my world, which is similar to that described in this answer, with suspended platforms between 5 and 40 km above the global sea, with 1 ATM at 25km altitude, with a similar gravity and scale height ...
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How many trading voyages a year would this ship make? [closed]
How many voyages a year would a single trading ship make, usually?
Firstly, please let me know if I'm using the wrong terms for any part of this question. I suspect my answer is already out there ...
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Maximum Size of a Wooden Sailing Vessel
King Darien "Stubby" Shortstock, the incredibly petite king of 1600s Imperial Rathakos, has commissioned me to build him a massive flagship to lead his mighty fleet. He wants it big. Bigger ...
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Would it be possible, given current technology, ten years, and an infinite amount of money, to construct a 7,000 foot (2200 meter) aircraft carrier?
Given current technology, ten years, and an infinite amount of money, would it be possible to build an aircraft carrier with a 7,000-foot-long (2,200 meters) flight deck? This is about seven times as ...
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Silent Ships: Can we Keep the Mer folk Happy?
Modern ships are loud.
So loud in fact, that it is actively harming ocean life.
Now, this alone is a serious issue that needs to be addressed. However, in my world the issue is compounded due to the ...
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How would one go about designing a carrier sailing ship for flying mounts? [duplicate]
Specifically, I am looking for a good design for a sailing ship with circa 17th century Earth technology that can carry a large swath of flying animals ridden by very small humanoids. The animals ...
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Solar panels for Naval ships in Ship building
As the Naval ships sail in the deep seas, oceans and they are open to the blue sky (As i visualise them), Can there be Naval ships where Solar panels could be required for them in specific cases, ...
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How would low-gravity seas affect ship design?
Just what the title says, I'm trying to understand how ships would be built for seas on low-gravity worlds. I've searched around a little for an identical question but surprsingly turned up empty-...
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I have an armada of teleporting sky fortresses. Do I still need a navy? [duplicate]
I'm trying to flesh out the military capabilities of my universe and just started to move into defining sea power.
When defining the air power I created a few things, the important ones for the ...
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Air(warships) and the 'wet navy'
My early 20th Century (ww1/interwar/early ww2) alternate world has armoured airships (I haven't fully worked out the physics but I assume some sort of handwavium to allow armoured ships not just ...
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For how much and for how long would a "Closed Cycle Nuclear Thermal Rocket Engine" generate thrust for a floating ship?
Context/TLDR:
The "Closed Cycle Nuclear Thermal Rocket Engine" is just a big nuclear steam engine that in this specific case, uses the (non radioactive) water steam to stay in air, at the ...
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When is the earliest that a vampire could have traveled from Europe to North America?
I'm writing an urban fantasy story revolving around, among other things, vampires secretly living in the United States in 1998. And since the first two vampires came into existence in the area that is ...
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How different would water need to be for boats to be impossible?
I mean changing the actual physics behind water (density, and other properties). How different would water need to be, to result in ships being impossible to build? (i.e. the ability to create ...
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Are jumping ships feasible? (Not jump drives, but ships that jump)
As mentioned above this is not about jump drives, this is about ships that physically jump.
Writing science fiction, trying not to handwave too much, so I want to check if this is a feasible tech.
...
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Aircraft Carrier or ship with similar functionality for Dragon Riders?
My World has Dragoons, these are Dragon Riders and the riders are expert marksmen. They use magic arrows like explosive/fire/wind/homing arrows for offensive (basically magic archers) along with ...
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How many refugees can I pack into a nuclear-powered version of the largest ship ever built?
Countryistan is a large island nation approximately 3,000 kilometers from the nearest landmass.
The government of Countryistan is secretly planning on committing genocide and ethnic cleansing against ...
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War strategy between cities on the coast of the same inland sea? [closed]
I'm working on a fantasy story where a major empire collapses into a civil war, and many of its most important cities fall in a region called the Cradle—a fertile region of floodplains and woodlands, ...
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Why would Mermaids develop ships?
The Context
My mermaids are amphibians that have legs that allow them to walk on land. They live in a lagoon similar to the barrier reef. The reef is roughly 1,000 square miles, and its average depth ...
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Effectiveness of a modern-built Q-ship in the Napoleonic Wars
Let us suppose that at the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars, we have a 5th-rate ship similar in appearance to the 38-gun HMS Lively with a displacement of approximately 820 tons, and a top speed under ...
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A world with WWII warships but more diverse classes/roles
I am trying to build a world where USN, RN, IJN, and KM are companies that build WWII ships that compete for ship components sales with more diverse/versatile roles in armour, turret, shells, rather ...
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How large can an oceangoing vessel be made within the constraints of Neolithic technology?
Long story short, I have a bunch of folks with Neolithic technology, and they want to build a big ship - preferably, a ship that's as large as they can make it.
How big can these Neolithic folks make ...
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Hyper-Agile Submarines?
Building off of another question I asked about the realism of short-range combat in the future, I was thinking about making combat scenarios with small, hyper-maneuverable submarines. These submarines ...
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How would you build a harbor in a world with *intense* tides?
Long story short, my world is set on a habitable moon of a gas giant, and as a result has some very intense tides (about 5x those of Earth, averaging a few dozen foot difference between high and low ...
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Concrete Warships vs Steel Warships
Humanity in my world has to deal with the invasion of inter-dimensional beings (Their tech level is around WW2 and in certain departments they're more advanced than we were around that period and in ...
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How much distance could chained ferryboats traverse?
Chained to the real world
If you're used to trek on flat lands with rivers here and there, you might have seen these boats as replacement to bridges :
A chained ferryboat, by Ludovic G. (resized ...
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What would boats look like on a planet with two moons?
For the purposes of this question, let us assume that one moon is similar in size to Earth's but slightly further away and the other is significantly smaller but approximately the same distance away ...
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Could medieval people build an airtight spaceship or space ark using their common resources?
This is set on a fictional alien world with medieval people. However, this world has alien livestock that are capable of flying into outer space and traveling to other worlds. These medieval-age ...
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Sailing Ships For The Vārẽn Sea
PROJEKT ' ABYDOS '
The (as of yet pretty ill-defined) setting of one of my worldbuilding projects is the Vārẽn Sea (working title). It's a large gulf that opens into waters with a large amount of ...
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Pre-Modern Shipping Containers?
Modern international trade basically runs on standardized shipping containers and the infrastructure developed to handle them. Looking at just a small part of it, using crane to unload full containers ...
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How hard is it to find ship-sized object via satellite?
I came up with a world that is similar to ours but is recovering from oil reserves depletion. In other words, there is very little to no petrol remaining, so the ones who can use it are mostly ...
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How do I get Ironclads/Submarines lifted into an in-atmosphere wormhole that leads into another identical one?
I am working on some lore for an overhaul mod, but I want to try to stay away from handwavium as much as I can, at first.
There's two terran planets connected by many stable wormholes, the most ruckus ...
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How would a enormous more-than-city-sized ship fare in a fantasy world?
A long time ago in my world, a people, who lived alone in a continent-sized island away from any significant other landmass, had a schism. Half of them departed in a fleet with numerous ships into the ...
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In a world where wood is scarce, what are the most important things you need wood for?
In most large civilizations on Earth, wood has been a fairly plentiful resource, so we've used it for all sorts of things: Houses, boats, carts, spears, arrows, bows, shields, barrels, firewood, paper ...
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Would oceans filled with long-lived, omnivore, intelligent Krakens make sea travel impossible?
Let's say the oceans' apex predator on a planet similar to Earth is a species of Kraken (octopus, just big huge ones) that live 200 years in average (so they have plenty of time to develop their ...
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How large could an oceangoing vessel be and still be able to move?
On some far-distant waterworld, the entire human race has been moved to vast city-ships that endlessly traverse the global ocean. Assuming an unlimited supply of fuel, how large could such a floating ...
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How would naval battles “realistically” work in a world with magic
In this world, mages can create a wide variety of spells, but they all have the same basis: creating or manipulating an element or both. They all also use mana. Mages are extremely common, as the vast ...
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Water/air mages making a ship move faster
In my world, water and air mages/wizards can control any instances of water or air. Moving water or air in one direction would not move the mage in the opposite direction.
Using this, what would be ...
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Which Neotropical Woods are Best for Shipbuilding?
In my book series, while most of the Aurean Empire has essentially a combination of the plant life of the American West and the Mediterranean, the northern provinces are a bit different because all of ...
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Is there a way to cross my volcanic ocean?
In my world there is an ocean that separates the two main continents. The problem is that I think it's impossible to navigate these waters as there are active volcanoes on the bottom of the ocean that ...
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Why would there be any use for sea shanties in space?
I understand that sea shanties were a type of work song, and often used to help sailors operate in sync with each other. They've survived as an art form, but so far as I know they don't have any ...
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Sea traversing ecosystem/ship?
I'm writing a fantasy story with a race of intelligent dragons who can increase the growth rate of/manipulate plants. If we pretend this is possible, what methods could these creatures utilize to keep ...
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How could medieval ships protect themselves from giant mermaids?
Long ago when apes and hominids split off a third group began to live in the seas and became mermaids/seafolk. Among several species of mermaids, there is a species of "giant mermaids" who ...
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Sailing Ship Needs to Make a Fast Getaway
Here's the setting I'm working out. The fantasy ship I came up with here (see "Dawn Treader" post at the bottom) needs to leave the harbor in a hurry. A strange "magical" purple ...
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Fantasy Sailing Ship with Oars Speed and Plausibility
I am looking to fashion a passably believable fantasy ship for a crew of about 30 privateers* (see remark, this could be changed if needed, although I prefer not to have a massive crew in the story). ...
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What would make sailing difficult?
I'm looking to write a story where the world is a lot of islands separated by rather small water expanses (about the width of the Mediterranean or maybe that and a half) and I am struggling to find a ...
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A Sailing Ship With Cylindrical Sails
In a dream, the image came to me of a modern / future ship driven by ring / cylinder sails. (Well, technically I saw something different, but this is what I knew it was supposed to refer to...) That ...
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How would sailing be affected if seas had actually dangerous large animals?
In the real world, sailing is undoubtedly dangerous, but 90% of that danger comes from either the weather, your mistakes, or other ships. Animals don't really count as a factor, unless you fall ...
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