Space:1889 - first print run received and assembled

Hullcutter Martian Screw Galley

Sky Runner Martian Screw Galley

Swiftwood Martian Kite

Whisperdeath Martian Kite

Space:1889 - Last 3d models from 1st batch done

'Hullcutter' Martian Screw Galley

'Warm Winds' Martian Merchantman Kite

'Whisperdeath' Martian Kite

Space:1889 - More 3d models

More hull models are done.

'Endtime' class Martian screw galley

'HMS Reliant' British aerial gunboat

'Sky Runner' Martian screw galley
This will be modified a bit more, by extending the stern section a bit.

'SMS Hamburg' German aerial gunboat

Test 3d prints for HMS Aphid

My test prints for the HMS Aphid hull components have arrived. Errhm, minus the actual bottom of the hull, the file of which I forgot to submit to the print vendor. Ahem.

No matter, because these were made to assess whether the scale of the model works. It does, so I have given the go ahead to the 3d designer to do the other 8 hull models.

Space:1889 flight stands

Photos of the flight stands I will use for the Space:1889 game.The hullcutter is an early attempt of mine at scratch-building.

 

Space:1889 Aerial Combat project

I am finally tackling a project that has been knocking about at the back of my mind for years:
a game for combat between Martian Cloudships and colonial Aerial Gunboats in the skies of the Red Planet.

Two things need to be sorted out: models and rules.

For models, I have found someone to design 3d-models of the hulls that I can print and then embellish with details, rigging, ordnance et cetera. I already have the test model for the British 'Aphid' class gunboat (you will find images of the model below). As soons as I have obtained a test print to check scale, 8 more hulls will be 3d-modelled. Scale is 1/300th(ish).
Ships will be modelled on home-made flight stands involving telescopic pointers, neodyme magnets and a genereous helping of stuff from the plumbing section of my local DIY store. So models will be shown at different altitudes, and they can yaw (obviously), but will not roll or pitch.

For rules, well, I will write my own. Again. :o)
I intend to steal a lot from games like, for example, Star Wars:X-Wing, where I like the way movement needs to be planned in advance, and is handled by means of templates. Rules will be geared towards each player commanding one to three ships, so they will simulate individual ship and small squadron actions, rather than grand fleets.

Stay tuned for news.

HMS 'Aphid'

Why Kites do not drift straight downwind

Having just finished Frank Chadwick's highly recommendable contribution to the Space:1889 and Beyond series of novels, I was left profoundly disturbed. Mr Chadwick, it appears, has succumbed to the voice of reason in the matter of nautical physics as applied to Martian cloudships.

To elaborate: in material published for the original edition of the Space:1889 games, High Martian cloudships (kites for short) have been depicted with rigging reminiscent of Earth sailing ships. See the three ships in the example below (courtesy of Uhrwerk Verlag, publishers of the German version of Space:1889) This is, in my humble opinion, aesthetically A Good Thing (TM).

Admittedly, it does not pass any muster other than the aesthetic, though. How so? Wet sailing vessels work because they constitute an interface between two media: wind pushes against their rigging, and water pushes against their hull. Only because hull and rigging do not offer the same resistance (strength and direction) to the medium they are enveloped in, can a sailing ship convert this difference into movement. More specifically: movement in a direction diverging from wind or current. Thus a kite, being enveloped in one medium only (air) can plausibly only drift downwind, because it does not have any water to brace itself against and "divert" wind power for propulsion. Frank Chadwick, in A Prince of Mars, has done the sensible thing, and revised his concept of how kites work. Here, kites lift themselves to high altitudes by means of their liftwood lattices, pitch their bow downwards, reduce lift and use canvas sails (wings, really) extending horizontally from the kite's sides to glide forward. Plausible? Yes. Romantically reminiscent of the Age of Sail? Most definitely not!

This simply will not do for the game I want to present. So how can I reconcile vertical rigging to single-medium kites? Simple, by cranking up the old suspension-of-disbelief a notch and introducing another medium: the gravitational field. What if the liftwood lattices resist the gravitational field just like a keel resists water?

To illustrate:

The picture above is a rough illustration of what a liftwood panel already does. To wit, it provides a force directly opposed to the force of gravity, which is proportional to the surface area of the liftwood panel as projected onto a plane orthogonal to the gravity vector*.

To make vertical rigging plausible, we need to add the following assumption:

In addition to providing lift, liftwood also resists being pushed orthogonally to a plane defined by the liftwood's grain and the gravitational force acting on the panel. Figuratively, one might think of the liftwood lattices extending an insubstantial "gravitation keel"** straight upward and downward, parallel to the kite's longitudinal axis. If this gravkeel resists being pushed through the gravitational field, we have the same set up as in a wet sailing ship, allowing us to plausibly rig kites vertically, with towering pyramids of canvas, dont'cherknow.

I will close my ruminations here, as I can hear ominous creaking sounds issuing from my suspension-of-disbelief.


* Me old maths teacher would kill me for making such a hash of geometry nomenclature.
** Actually, it is more of a centreboard, not having any weight.