The Sky's the Limit: Airships in D&D

[fectin]

Right. You're basically taking advantage of the square-cube discrepancy, but more so, because ships are basically linear.

Here's the problem though: what are you making your envelope out of? At minimum, it's 3.6 km^2, and most materials aren't going to be suitable. Even assuming you come up with weightless spidersilk, you still lose your entire aircastle to one well-placed fireball.

Immovable rods is a cool idea, but could get super expensive. Each rod provides acceleration up to .00016 feet/second^2. That means a single pair of rods used alternately, neglecting air resistance, is enough to get you from LA to DC in four and a half days, at which point you would be going ~40mph. That could be worse.

With air resistance though, (using http://www.arraysolutions.com/Products/windloads.htm because Solving Naviar-Stokes for a made-up, irregular object is more masochism than I'm okay with on a Sunday morning), and assuming a .25km^2 cross-section and basically no drag, you get a top speed (relative airspeed!) of equal to about 90 percent of the square root of the number of rod pairs, in knots. So 1 pair of rods gives you .92 knots, 4 pairs gives you 1.84, 16 pairs gives you 3.68, etc.

To go as fast as the goodyear blimp, you would need about 4900 immovable rods, for a total cost of about 24.5 million gold, just for the rods.

Of course, that is for the Seawise Giant; smaller things are less screwed.

[Vebyast]

Immovable Rods are <15k per, so they can be Wished for in effectively limitless quantity. Doing any of this without the backup of an entire civilization or a thirteenth-level wizard is silly; the Airwise Giant is something like a third the area of Lower Manhattan and twice as tall as its tallest building.

We don't care about the load-bearing capacity of the envelope because there's a large internal structure. That allows us to build a bunch of "smaller" (Hindenberg-sized) independent cells, each of which is hooked to its neighbors and cabled to the nearest structural member.

The structure itself is a kind of huge, mutated suspension bridge. Basically, the golden gate bridge's suspension, cut into a few sections and rearranged.

[fectin]

The structure itself is a kind of huge, mutated suspension bridge. Basically, the golden gate bridge's suspension, cut into a few sections and rearranged.

That is very unlikely to weigh less than the cabin.

A while back, we were talking about prismatic wall based vacuum dirigibles. You can get huge amount of lift out of that, but the problem is a single dispel screws you over. So I looked at the weight of lining those prismatic walls with lead. Even down at 1 mil thickness, that thin skin was the major weight contributor. Metal is really, really heavy. When you say "like the golden gate bridge" that's a problem. 1/2 km of the golden gate bridge weighs about 160k tons.

Remember, the Hindenberg was literally the size of the Titanic, and had a total lift of around 242 tons (and weighed 130 tons).

[RadiantPhoenix]

Doesn't Prismatic Wall require you to dispel all the layers in order unless you use Disjunction?

[TarkisFlux]

Ugh. Yes, fantastic airships don't work well with real world physics. Can we not get dragged down by this discussion yet again?

I honestly don't see what the problem is with tracking facing

There's not really a problem with it, it's just an extra layer of complexity. It's not like facing actually matters for anything else in the game, so adding / retaining it here should provide benefits. I don't think that it adds anything aside from some rather thin movement realism, and that's insufficient reason to retain it given the other premises and goals of the project as I understand them.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Possible benefits of facing:
* Attacking segments of larger airships in melee
* Crossing the T
* Chases/Dogfights

So, let's see how we can get those benefits without that.

Chases and dogfights can be done by mechanically encouraging skyfighters to move full speed each round, and allowing an opposed pilot check to 'get behind' another airship, preventing them from using weapons that can't fire into the theoretical 'rear fire arc' on you.

Crossing the T is just a matter of allowing skyships to move-full attack-move if they fire perpendicular to their movement vector.

Sky Fortresses still want to track facing, but that's more a matter of tracking terrain.

Note that all of that is only in top-down view; in side-scroll view, facing is easy: unless you're in a skyfighter, your top is up.

Also, in side-view, skyships can do this thing where they try to put their cannons on the same level as the other skyship's envelope, and if they line up, they get double crit range or something.

EDIT: Also, bombs and ramming attacks are cool.

EDIT2: Skirmish for skyfighters?
Dogfighting would have a maximum range.

EDIT3: Okay, not exactly skirmish; bonus to hit and AC, rather than damage and AC, and based on how much speed rather than level.

[Vebyast]

That is very unlikely to weigh less than the cabin.

You'd be surprised. Fully-loaded displacement of the Seawise Giant: 700kt. Total weight of the Golden Gate Bridge, including deck, towers, anchors, and foundations: 700kt. The cables might be 50kt of that.

Anyway, as TF says, I think that this discussion has reached the point of diminishing returns. I don't want to deal with Naiver-Stokes either.

---

For me, the real benefit of facing is to make the distinctions between maneuverability categories more important. The difference between a dragon and a pixie should be tactically important, but if both can freely reorient at the beginning of the turn, your relative positioning really doesn't matter.

Additionally, because the sky generally has far fewer obstacles and bits of terrain than the ground, it has quite a bit less tactical complexity. Facing restores quite a bit of that lost complexity but isn't too difficult to deal with, making it one of the more efficient ways to fix that problem.

Crossing the T is just a matter of allowing skyships to move-full attack-move if they fire perpendicular to their movement vector.

I quite like this idea, especially if you extended it to skyfighters' forward arcs. A skyfighter can either move-fire forward-move, strafing-run style, or it can move-aerobatic maneuver-fire in any direction, as you'd get from a might agile combat aircraft.

[TarkisFlux]

There are other ways to make maneuverability important than tracking facing. I suggested some of them a while back, things like "have to actually use your full movement" and "have to use X action on maintaining flight or hovering" and "limited direction changes during movement" and "gain higher elevation". A pixie in this setup could fly from target to target without issue, while a dragon could basically charge in a straight line and couldn't pull up short in front of a cliff face without stalling. I'm not sure it's as interesting as the ground scenarios, but I don't know that adding turn maximums really gets that back either.
----
Crossing the T happens pretty easily by treating skyships with a crew in a similar fashion as mounts. The navigator / captain / rowers uses some action to move or direct the boat and the crew use their actions to fire weapons / cast spells / board / launch fighters / etc. Just like riding a pony with cannons on it. Sky fighters probably don't behave like this, except in a pilot / gunner setup, unless we explicitly give them that ability. Being able to fire a loaded weapons as a swift action seems pretty reasonable here, and sets up the need for an aerobatic maneuver to fire outside of strafing runs if you don't have really awesome maneuverability (which I've already indicated I'm for).

[fectin]

Seems like the easy way to do that would be to let some skyfighters give Flyby Attack. Then there you still get crossing the T, and don't need any special rules for smaller ships.

Ugh. Yes, fantastic airships don't work well with real world physics. Can we not get dragged down by this discussion yet again?

That's halfway fair.

Explicit discussions of wind resistance are probably not necessary. This didn't start out as raining on the parade though, you genuinely need to figure out how your airships work, otherwise they can't interact with anything. Are they treated silk full of hydrogen? huge bag, tiny cabin, and fireball is a deadly weapon. Are they full of crazy Unobtanium Gas? Needs some sort of lift ratio and a price, and implies a huge supply chain. May or may not explode from fireballs, but probably the skin still burns off and the ship falls out of the sky. Bound giant flying critters? Much more durable, but your ships are vulnerable to Dominate Monster. Also, the right answer may be regular arrows instead of fire arrows.

[Josh_Kablack]

Extensive arguments about the real-world weight, materials, and necessary envelope thickness of airships that will only be built in fantasies are a waste of space.


However, discussion of the real-world limitations of actual airships is probably helpful and various suggestions for potential fantastic ways to surpass those limitations is definitely useful. Fantasy worlds can have lower gravity, and/or denser atmospheres and/or magical substances such as walls of force that allow weightless structures and others like Upsidaisium that provide a degree of buoyancy impossible in the real world. And using each of those in a game world leads to other setting implications which should be touched upon.

Obviously, at the point of Jack and the Beanstalk style Cloud Castles, somewhere we're throwing our hands up and saying "it's magic" but there are plot points to be had in defining precise where that somewhere is. It's a different world if the beanstalk is a planar gateway to a plane with subjective gravity than if the clouds are just the exhaust from massive turbines lifting an entire castle than if the clouds the castle rests upon are an engineered Ice-Nine envelope containing water vapor heated to be less dense than the surrounding air than if the castle itself is carved from Floating Rocks, and so on and so forth.

[RadiantPhoenix]

So, thinking about it:
* Sky fortresses staying up with floating rocks is suitably fantasy and provides my desired "hovers well, but can't turn easily" if the engines are sufficiently small relative to the inertial mass of the rocks

* Skyfighters fly by having air elementals or something bound to them.

* Skyships are held up by immense envelopes filled with vacuum or gas or suchlike. Very fragile if it gets hit, so combat skyships have protective enchantments all over that stuff.

[Vebyast]

* Skyfighters fly by having air elementals or something bound to them.

Or by having a cheetah chained up behind the pilot with immovable rods glued to its feet.

* Skyships are held up by immense envelopes filled with vacuum or gas or suchlike. Very fragile if it gets hit, so combat skyships have protective enchantments all over that stuff.

I like the differentiation between movement class by motive mechanism - a one-man gnome airship is way smaller than a dragon, but the former is probably a skyship while the latter is definitely a huge skyfighter.

(I assume that things with wings are in fact skyfighters, yes? Or do we need another category that's even more maneuverable than a skyfighter?)

[fectin]

Are skyfighter, skyship, etc. game terms (descriptive), keywords (have mechanical effects), or just terms we're using for design? If it's game terms, it doesn't matter much what category anything goes in, but if it's keywords it matters a lot, and you probably have some flyers that are none of those categories.

As a strawman, how's this:
Many things can fly. Ducks, air elementals, the list goes on. Most things that fly use the normal rules, but there are three classes of skymachine that have special rules, Skyfighters, Skyships, and Skydocks.
- A skyfighter is usually (but not always) a small, one-man flyer. A skyfighter crew cannot take independent actions (e.g., a wizard can't ride shotgun to fling fireballs). However, every skyfighter has Flyby Attack and Run. Skyfighters add the pilot's dex bonus to AC. Regardless of maneuverability, skyfighters cannot hover and must move at least half their speed each round or fall (but may circle as tightly as would normally be allowed.
- A skyship is usually larger, generally on a scale similar to a sailing ship. It can only take move actions, and then only when crewed by its minimum crew. Unlike a Skyfighter, a skyship which is uncrewed or does not move simply remains stationary. However, a regardless pf maneuverability, skyship may not gain or lose more than 10 feet of altitude each round. It does not fall unless destroyed. Anyone on a skyship not acting as crew make act independently.
- A skydock is a castle built from rock or metal alloyed with aetheric ore and floating on an island of the same. While no actual structure is technically required, as a practical matter every dock has one. Every skydock is a huge chunk of alloy at least 1000 feet in diameter, though most are much larger. Skydocks do not accelerate. It is possible, though immensely difficult, to tow one to another location, and some have been fitted with enormous engines, but they are unable to change direction or speed in combat, and are completely unmoved by winds less than hurricane force. Their altitude is part is set by design, and never changes without redesigning the skydock. In the unlikely event that one is forced to a different altitude, it will "fall" up or down until it reaches the correect altitude. A skydock also has no weight limit. It is not possible to build new structures on one (or rather, doing so is the same as designing a new skydock), but anything else that can be stacked on it has no effect. Skydocks have the following effects: anything directly above a skydock with a fly speed is treated as having perfect maneuverability (this explicitly allows skyfighters to hover, and skyships to fly directly up or down). Jump checks made directly above a skydock receive a +30 circumstance bonus. Falling onto a skydock happens normally, but never causes damage. Skydocks are frequently built with very tall towers and gangplanks.

Aethric ore acts as a normal metal, but has a strong and strange antigravity effect, which is proportional to the cube of distance and the squares of the masses involved. Savants are baffled as to why this would be the case. In effect, it pushes very strongly up, produces alloys that float at very specific altitudes, and makes for very unstable skyfighters and skyships.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Or by having a cheetah chained up behind the pilot with immovable rods glued to its feet.

That would require you to keep hitting the buttons, so it doesn't actually work... Maybe a chariot hooked up to a flying cheetah?

(I assume that things with wings are in fact skyfighters, yes? Or do we need another category that's even more maneuverable than a skyfighter?)

I was actually thinking that flying mounts would be a fourth category, but having them work like skyfighters actually seems like a good idea, now that I think about it.

Are skyfighter, skyship, etc. game terms (descriptive), keywords (have mechanical effects), or just terms we're using for design? If it's game terms, it doesn't matter much what category anything goes in, but if it's keywords it matters a lot, and you probably have some flyers that are none of those categories.

I was originally just using them as categories, but mechanical effects might develop naturally.

As a strawman, how's this:
Many things can fly. Ducks, air elementals, the list goes on. Most things that fly use the normal rules, but there are three classes of skymachine that have special rules, Skyfighters, Skyships, and Skydocks.
- A skyfighter is usually (but not always) a small, one-man flyer. A skyfighter crew cannot take independent actions (e.g., a wizard can't ride shotgun to fling fireballs). However, every skyfighter has Flyby Attack and Run. Skyfighters add the pilot's dex bonus to AC. Regardless of maneuverability, skyfighters cannot hover and must move at least half their speed each round or fall (but may circle as tightly as would normally be allowed.

I don't like this; I want skyfighters to be able to hover. My analogy was a car, not an airplane, and you can totally park a car in the middle of a road, even if it's a bad idea. I also don't see why passengers shouldn't be able to take independent actions.

The rest sounds good, though.

[fectin]

I'm not attached to any of those ideas, but here's my reasoning:
Fighters can park at docks. Otherwise, they need to keep moving. Otherwise, they will flat out beat boats by parking directly above or below them and blasting away. In return for this, they get to be very fast and very maneuverable. Flyby attack is pretty potent here.
Passengers can't do anything because otherwise, the one with all the wizards wins. You wait in a forest, fly straight up at the enemy skyships, and everyone's prepared actions go off and you win. That's dumb. If you want to use artillery, you have to put everyone in a fast skyship and maneuver for it.

My idea was sort of to establish two newer, simpler maneuverability categories, then let everything else fly normally. So this doesn't change what a dragon can do, but makes it much easier to track what a blimp can do.

Other than balance, is there anything for or against hovering?

[RadiantPhoenix]

they will flat out beat boats by parking directly above or below them and blasting away. In return for this, they get to be very fast and very maneuverable. Flyby attack is pretty potent here.

Hmm...

As I said, I was thinking of skyfighters behaving more like cars (on magic carpets); I see your point, though.

I still want people to be able to embark and disembark from a skyfighter in wilderness areas.

First thought: what if we allowed skyfighters to hover, but declared that if they were hovering, they were considered horizontal, and thus could not fire axial weapons at an airship below them?

Second thought: a skyfighter could still just circle above a skyship and still be outside the airship's fire arcs. Skyships need escorts anyway.

Third thought: what skyfighters have two modes: fly and hover. It takes , say, two rounds to switch between them, and in hover mode the skyfighter has, like, 15ft speed, while in fly mode it has, like, 150ft, and then airships move somewhere between the two, say 60ft.

Passengers can't do anything because otherwise, the one with all the wizards wins. You wait in a forest, fly straight up at the enemy skyships, and everyone's prepared actions go off and you win. That's dumb. If you want to use artillery, you have to put everyone in a fast skyship and maneuver for it.

Okay, so, how about this:
* There's no line of effect between the inside and outside of a skyfighter in "fly" mode (barring special modifications), but you can still do things inside
* Skyships have hulls made of materials that are super-tough, but are extra-vulnerable to stress concentrations, so the bottom of a skyship is almost invulnerable, but you can still damage the sides and top

[fectin]

I am totally okay with the idea that skyfighters are VTOL. If they can just land and take off because they want to, I have no problem with that. I don't like them sitting in one square midair in a dogfight, though that's thematics more than balance. I'm imagining them as the moral equivalent of x-wings now.

I think the "line of effect" solution works too.

I'll write up something more thorough when I get home.

[fectin]

Oh by the way: what does weaponry look like? Crossing the T implies cannon or siege weapons; skyfighters need some kind of integrated weapon; I have no clue for skydocks.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Skydocks have turrets like the death star, skyfighters have axial spell cannons.

Also, my suggestion for encouraging high-speed dogfights is to give skyfighters a logarithmic bonus to hit and AC based on their speed, something like

Distance Moved	Bonus
0ft	-20
5ft	-8
10ft	-4
15ft	-3
20ft	-2
30ft	-1
40ft	0
60ft	+1
100ft	+2
150ft	+3
200ft	+4
300ft	+5
x10	+6

[Chamomile]

I'm running a campaign involving magepunk airships taking their cues from Final Fantasy XII right now, so I've been thinking a bit on this subject. I haven't done a whole lot of crunch yet because the campaign isn't going to be seeing airship battles for a while and I'm focusing on more immediate things, but I do have a general (campaign specific) gist of what the interaction between different kinds of ships should be like. I'll throw it up here in the hopes that it might help. Considering I'll probably be stealing the completed system for my campaign, it only seems fair.

There are 9 kinds of airship: Battleships, carriers, cruisers, frigates, destroyers, corvettes, sloops, fighters, and interceptors.

Battleships are huge, slow, tough, and have lots of really big guns on them. They can't hit smaller, more maneuverable craft at all, but they can chew through cruisers, frigates, and destroyers like butter. Their main weaknesses are sloops and corvettes. Fighters carry only a single torpedo and the guns on fighters and interceptors aren't enough to do any damage to a battleship's hull, so even though a battleship stands no chance of hitting them, they just don't matter. Sloops, however, carry a dozen-odd torpedoes (and, like arrows in a quiver, this usually isn't even tracked, giving them effectively infinity torpedoes), and corvettes have strong enough cannons to penetrate a battleship's armor. Since battleships can't effectively hit either of these two craft, they can whittle its hull down to nothing in relative safety.

Carriers are of similar size to battleships, but have lighter armor and fewer guns. Their main purpose is to deploy sloops, fighters, and interceptors outside their typical combat range. They get chewed to pieces by virtually anything if left unprotected.

Cruisers are a bit smaller than battleships and have lighter armor, but their cannons are just as powerful. Because they are much faster than other capital ships, they're used to quickly destroy frigates and destroyers, allowing corvettes, sloops, and fighters to attack the larger, slower ships at will. Cruisers are also used to reinforce battleships once they arrive on the battlefield. Cruisers, like battleships, have limited defenses against corvettes and sloops, but because they are only slightly slower than them, they can often hit their targets and retreat behind their own frigates and destroyers without taking significant damage.

Frigates are another size category smaller than cruisers and have average speed and armor. They're covered in small anti-fighter cannons, which makes them useless against anything bigger than a corvette (and not terribly effective against the corvettes themselves), but extremely deadly against interceptors, fighters and sloops, whose main cannons do very little damage to the frigate's armor and whose torpedoes fire too slowly and at too close range to compete against the frigates' anti-fighter guns. Battleships, cruisers, destroyers, and even corvettes if in large numbers can chew through frigates very quickly, which means that frigates typically serve as escorts to battleships and carriers, which can keep them safe from bigger ships.

Destroyers are of the same size, armor class, and speed as frigates, but rely on heavier and more powerful cannons. Although these cannons are ineffective against battleships, they can pack a powerful punch against frigates, cruisers, and, more importantly, they're accurate enough to hit corvettes and sloops. While destroyers are too slow to be of much use as a frigate-killer and too lightly armored to stand up against the firepower of a cruiser, they have the accuracy and power to defend larger ships like battleships and cruisers from corvettes and sloops. As such, they typically act as escorts (or, occasionally, emergency frigate-killers).

Corvettes are smaller again than destroyers and frigates (Gargantuan size), with light armor and weapons, but they are very fast and fairly cheap. Covered in several small, precise anti-fighter weapons, they can hit sloops, fighters, and interceptors with fair accuracy, and they pack enough punch to discourage interceptors from even getting close. A corvette's main cannon is a significant threat to a frigate or cruiser and can help whittle down a battleship's hull, making an armada of corvettes the go-to battleship and carrier killers once the escorts have been destroyed. Their incredible speed also allows them to act as a poor man's cruiser with regards to frigate-killing.

Sloops are Huge size with light armor and fairly slow speed for their size. They're still much too small to be hit by battleships, carriers, cruisers, or destroyers, which allows them to drop torpedoes on them with impunity. Sloops also have an important roll in air superiority, in that they can fire torpedoes in great enough numbers and with precise enough accuracy to attack ground positions. They're easily destroyed by fighters, interceptors, and frigates, and their performance against corvettes is, dollar-for-dollar, roughly even (so if you take $X worth of sloops and throw them at $X worth of corvettes, both sides are going to end up as scrap).

Fighters are Large size with balanced armor, speed, and firepower for their size. They carry a single torpedo which can be used to make some dents in any size of ship, and their cannons allow them to chew up sloops and interceptors easily. They can also be of limited use in bombing corvettes, though every second the battle continues after the fighters use their torpedoes the battle tips further in favor of the corvettes. Fighters are also quickly destroyed when facing frigates.

Interceptors are Medium size and typically piloted by Small size creatures, as the tiny cockpit is rather cramped for Medium creatures. Interceptors are lightly armored, have a small cannon and no torpedoes, and are incredibly fast. They're useful in destroying sloops, but other ships can do the same and do it much faster than the interceptor's tiny gun. The interceptor's main use on the battlefield is stalling fighters and corvettes. Their cannons do just enough damage that the fighters and corvettes cannot ignore them entirely and must take evasive maneuvers, however the interceptor's incredible maneuverability means that destroying them is going to take a significant amount of time, during which time destroyers and frigates can reposition themselves to defend against the fighters and corvettes.

There's been some discussion about figuring out how thinks will work with regards to real naval ships and etc. I hope this helps with that.

[RadiantPhoenix]

One or more of these may be relevant:



Note that these do not have an axis for size.

Source="Project Rho" (projectrho.com/rocket/spacewarship.php)

[fectin]

Won't be tonight afterall. it got a bit extensive.

[Vebyast]

Oh by the way: what does weaponry look like? Crossing the T implies cannon or siege weapons; skyfighters need some kind of integrated weapon; I have no clue for skydocks.

Not necessarily; crossing the T just means that one unit has a position which is advantageous both for fire and maneuver.

---

The corresponding advantage for lighter-than-air craft is almost certainly being above your target. Whatever their weapons are, they can't be pointed at you because their envelope is in the way, while you have the opportunity to shoot at and drop stuff on their envelope. You can also force them to descend by damaging their envelope, so you maintain complete control over the vertical range.

Magic-rocks skyships behave differently. Since magic rocks also allow the skyship to be extremely dense, this variation of skyship will be heavily armed and armored for its size. They will also have extremely good fields of fire, to the point of not having a "T" to cross. They're essentially a cross between a main battle tank, an A10, and an attack helicopter.

---

Skyfighters with non-perfect maneuverability reduce to something like modern fixed-wing combat, albeit with different parameters. They might be able to yaw strongly without rolling first, for example, or they might not be able to change pitch as quickly. Some maneuvers would have to be changed and new ones would be possible, but it'd feel pretty much the same.

Skyfighters with slow omnidirectional movement are similar to helicopters. I honestly have no idea how this would work.

Skyfighters with fast omnidirectional movement are a 3d version of DND tactical combat. They can move isotropically, so space is basically a giant 3d grid. There are a few subtleties relating to gravity (for example, bombs only work in the downward direction), but other than that nothing interesting.

---

Dragons have their own modes of combat, which depend strongly on how the dragon's physiology. You can tailor your dragons to fit whatever combat you want. Interestingly, skyfighters with rear gunners are probably a dragon variant.

---

The only thing that depends significantly on equipment and tech level is skyfortress combat. Skyfortresses without long-range antiskyfortress weapons reduce to pre-gunpowder galleys; combat is entirely by boarding because that's the only way to sink another fortress, and whoever has altitude can drop rocks and boarding ladders for an overwhelming advantage. Skyfortresses with huge fixed (can't traverse) guns are basically identical to age of sail gunpowder combat, complete with Ts to cross; altitude varies in usefulness based on how much the main guns can elevate or depress. Note that all guns must be able to elevate, otherwise ranging is impossible, so the only question is how much. Skyfortresses with large fields of fire do not have T's to cross, reverting to an extremely slow version of DND tactical combat. Skyfortresses deploying missiles, small craft, or adventurers don't even bother to maneuver tactically unless being boarded by another skyfortress (!). Skyfortresses using wizards or blasting wands as their main guns can be any of the above depending on the details; a wizard with a super-long-range attack spell capable of sinking other fortresses might be "large gun, large field of fire", while a DND3.x wizard would be more like "no antiskyfortress weapons".

---

TL;DR: You can choose a technological paradigm to fit whatever mechanics you want.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I like the "no anti-sky fortress weapons" paradigm, because it gives players a more active role.

As I mentioned, I think that skyfighters should be able to switch between slow omnidirectional and fast non-omni movement.

Lighter than air skyships sound best too.

[fectin]

Right. This took a while longer than expected, but I've put some stuff up here:
http://wiki.fectin.com/doku.php?id=scratchpad:airships
If that looks interesting enough, I'll expand it out to skyships next.

That's not because I want it to stay on my site, it's just because I'm used to using my site as a scratchpad.