Skyships

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skeptical_troll
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Re: Skyships

Post by skeptical_troll »

Wussel wrote:You are proberbly aware, that you are asking along the line: How does magic work?
indeed, I think what distinguish good fantasy from nonsense is that magic should respond to some logic, which the reader (or player, for a game) can understand to avoid too many deus ex-machina situations. For the same reason, magic shouldn't break too many of the fundamental laws of the real world. Dimensional gates are ok, although I'm personally not a big fun, but opening and closing worm-holes just to keep a ship going (and just in case the wind is blowing in the wrong direction) seems really an overkill to me. I'm fine with magical gems as source of energy, to launch fire etc. so the solution of using the gem as a propeller sounds easier to me (it basically take the air and convey it in a thin stream at strong speed, the boat will move in the opposite direction, no problem with eddies, mass conservation etc).

An alternative possibility is to use lifting power of crystal also for motion: basically the ship can be equipped with some sort of wings used for gliding. You can decide to deactivate the lifting crystal (another question is how to control them and hence your altitude? Different properties based on heat-light-what else? ) and use the wings to glide in the required direction. Once you are down you reactivate the crystal and start again once you are up.

Anyway, this Filburd's saga is quite amusing, I look forward to the next chapter! :)
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ForestDragon
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Re: Skyships

Post by ForestDragon »

skeptical_troll wrote:Anyway, this Filburd's saga is quite amusing, I look forward to the next chapter! :)
i think this brand needs SOME kind of advertisement, btw, the 'Remember: nothing flies like a Filburd!' slogan is pretty good for advertisement :P
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Celtic_Minstrel
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Re: Skyships

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

Wussel wrote:The point with zeppelins is more that if you have engines to propel them, you are better of with planes.
I'm not sure why you would say this. With planes, the engines must provide sufficient forward movement to produce lift. With a zeppelin, the lift is pretty much automatic, so the engines only need to provide direction. This means for example that zeppelins can go slower, if they choose to. (Yes, this can be a good thing.) It also means that if the wind happens to be in the right direction, they can switch off the engines and just cruise on the current.

Planes and aerostats (blimps, dirigibles, etc) each have their own advantages and disadvantages. I'm pretty sure it's just a fluke of history that caused planes to become dominant.
skeptical_troll wrote:For the same reason, magic shouldn't break too many of the fundamental laws of the real world.
I disagree - breaking the fundamental laws of the real world is pretty much the point of magic. If you can make it follow some of the fundamental rules, then that's great, but as long as you can make it internally consistent, it doesn't really matter that much.
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tr0ll
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Re: Skyships

Post by tr0ll »

Celtic_Minstrel wrote:
skeptical_troll wrote:For the same reason, magic shouldn't break too many of the fundamental laws of the real world.
I disagree - breaking the fundamental laws of the real world is pretty much the point of magic. If you can make it follow some of the fundamental rules, then that's great, but as long as you can make it internally consistent, it doesn't really matter that much.
Wesnoth as documented in canon is a low-magic world, meaning what skeptical_troll said. In other words, a character or group of them must perform (in the story or dialogue) elaborate and difficult rituals to have much more effect than their individual battle magic. A similar amount of (real) effort must be expended by the era/campaign/scenario designer/coder to exceed the units' stock battle magic and do something interesting affecting many units or a terrain.
Wussel
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Re: Skyships

Post by Wussel »

Maybe you confused it with Westeros ? :D

But I do agree with magical effects besides battle magic need extra efforts. But there are effects like teleport (mainline, heindal), summoning (To Lands Unknown, Author: inferno8) and exotic undead (dugi). A fellow opened a gateway to some chaos plane (Amaranthine Stone, Author: FaeLord). Yep and undeads are everywhere.

So I would not call it a low magic world. The magic is just not on this tactical skirmish level we usually play.
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Re: Skyships

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

Generally speaking, campaigns not in mainline can't be considered as canon, so any magic in To Lands Unknown, Legend of the Invincibles, or Amaranthine Stone does not count.

I can't remember my reasoning for calling it a low magic world, so I won't argue with you on that detail.
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Wussel
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Re: Skyships

Post by Wussel »

That still leaves one issue: Why can we battle without fog of war so often? Surely there must be a magic scrying orb for every commander. If one out of five units is a magican we are at the level of any fantasy game. Much more than Tolkin's middle earth. Low magic is cool, but it would be more like middle age gamplay.
Last edited by Wussel on November 30th, 2016, 7:57 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Sudipta
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Re: Skyships

Post by Sudipta »

Wussel wrote:That sitill leaves one issue: Why can we battle without fog of war so often? Surely there must be a magic scrying orb for every commander. If one out of five units is a magican we are at the level of any fantasy game. Much more than Tolkin's middle earth. Low magic is cool, but it would be more like middle age gameplay.
I know this is blunt but its for gameplay strategy reasons. U wouldn't love wesnoth if every battle had u blindly running around waiting to stumble on an enemy or scouring the map just trying to find the enemy leader. :P
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tr0ll
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Re: Skyships

Post by tr0ll »

probably the reason no one has added a scrying orb or spell to a UMC yet is that fog of war is used so little elsewhere. i would be fine with fog of war appearing more often in the intermediate and always in the expert campaigns. there are different degrees of fog too, sometimes you can see the terrain and sometimes you cant.
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Re: Skyships

Post by Celtic_Minstrel »

tr0ll wrote:there are different degrees of fog too, sometimes you can see the terrain and sometimes you cant.
Uhh. When you can't see the terrain, that's called "shroud". When you can see the terrain but not enemy units, that's called "fog of war". Of course, scenarios can activate both if they choose to.
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Can-ned_Food
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Re: Skyships

Post by Can-ned_Food »

skeptical_troll wrote:
Wussel wrote:You are proberbly aware, that you are asking along the line: How does magic work?
indeed, I think what distinguish good fantasy from nonsense is that magic should respond to some logic, which the reader (or player, for a game) can understand to avoid too many deus ex-machina situations.
What makes good fantasy even better is when the rules for magic are handled as you would any conflict in a 5–piece story. If your rules for magic, otherwise believable and inherently consistent, cause you some consternation or difficulty while exploring, then take advantage of that as a premise for story, rather than invent something new so as to dismiss it in favor of the types of stories you'd rather create. This is one thing that distinguishes, e.g., golden age Sci-Fi from the more character-driven stuff.

Not sure how that applies here, but I thought it ought to be mentioned.
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