Making a Fantasy Game (PhoneLobster, please stay out)

[MartinHarper]

Each of the floatstones themselves are just big cubes

Cubes just don't say magical to me. How about pyramids? Or discs?

[virgil]

Where they are matters, because with sufficiently large floatstones, the physical capacity of the chains you hang from will be your limiting factor; that and the physical capacity of whatever the chains are connected to on the city. Assuming you continue with the chain option, rather than the "we turned Gibraltar into a floatstone" option.

As for cubes not saying 'magic', it's hard to keep that opinion when you have a city built around a rock in the sky.

[Username17]

Each of the floatstones themselves are just big cubes

Cubes just don't say magical to me. How about pyramids? Or discs?

Pyramids are made out of cubes.

I'm so confused by this comment.

-Username17

[Tsuzua]

I suspect it's because cubes are typically considered to be plain while pyramids have "mythical" power. I personally like Las Bolas for floatstone shape. That or go all Zardoz with it. Floatstone style and shapes would vary wildly over time period and maker really so people should just use whatever shape they feel like would be cool.

[Beth_Naught]

Thanks for helping me grok the architecture.

One building on one cubic meter floatstone? Sure. In order for the floatstone to not rip through the ground floor your foundation needs some pretty high-end concrete with compressive strength >= 60,000 pascals (and handwaved tensile strength, since rebar dampens the feylift). Possible on Earth, albeit barely.

If that building's on a cone (r = 3m, h = 3m) of ground with density 2000kg / m^3 (split the difference between soil and granite), that's a 6 tonne building on 57 tonnes of earth. So a stoneshaper needs Increase Compressive Strength: 2 orders of magnitude rather than Increase Compressive Strength: 1 order of magnitude to prevent the islet from falling apart.

There's probably a a big islet with the Skymage Academy where you can dock a bunch of skyships:
r = 1000m
h = 300m
V = 3.14 * 10^8m^3
mass = 6.28 * 10^11kg
force needed to oppose gravity = 6.16 * 10^12N
Even if it's as intensely overbuilt as the previous, the buildings on top can be neglected since their weight's growing a little faster than quadratically and the island's weight grows cubically.

Assuming that:
floatstone lift increases quadratically by mass
minimum floatstone volume = 1m^3
floatstone density = 6,000kg/m^3
three pancaked floatstones distributed equidistantly around the islet's circumference for stability
mass = 2.64*10^5kg each
V = 44m^3
h = 1m
r = 3.74m
loadbearing surface = 44m^2
force on each = 2.05 * 10^12N
pressure on each = 4.66 * 10^10Pa

A stoneshaper needs Increase Compressive Strength: 7 orders of magnitude.

Alternatively, floatstone lift = mass and instead of strengthening stone you just have the aforementioned Rock of Gibraltar's worth in floatstone.

Am I getting closer, or just more annoying?

[JonSetanta]

An ideal pyramid is 1/6th of a cube in area and 6 of said perfect pyramids combined can make a perfect square.
That's about the closest match I can think of.
Otherwise, pyramids have 5 fuckin sides... what the fuck? That's no cube.


Turn a cube on its angle. That's magical. Extra points for resting one impossible on its.. point.

[Draco_Argentum]

Am I getting closer, or just more annoying?

My understanding is that the floatstone is the base. There is no dirt/rock supported by floatstone, just floatstone with buildings on top.

[MartinHarper]

My understanding is that the floatstone is the base. There is no dirt/rock supported by floatstone, just floatstone with buildings on top.

Frank was saying "a 1 meter cube has the lifting power to support a roughly 4x8 meter building that is two stories high.", which implies some sort of overhang. He was also saying "Each piece of float stone needs to be attuned and set separately. So not only is there a comparative advantage for using larger pieces..." which implies that you have a few large floatstones (maybe 10m by 10m) supporting an entire island. A 10m cube can support a thousand buildings, which is more than you can fit on its 10m x 10m surface.

[Parthenon]

For some reason I'm imagining that as space on the island runs out, then various blocks are added floating in space, and large suspension bridge type structures are built overhanging the edge, and the surface of the city getting further and further outside the island as time goes by...

My problem is that if there are blocks in the middle of the island, what is stopping everything below the blocks from falling? There are overhangs and so on in nature, but in general they tend to be arches or fall relatively quickly. Hmmmm... if there are various stones placed at intervals at the bottom of the island, and then lots of stone arches connecting them, with the soil and so on on top of that. Or is that stupid?

Also, how would you repair the bottom of floating objects? If the skyships are hanging from stones, then they can't fit under the object with the passengers close enough to the bottom to do anything.

[CatharzGodfoot]

Hmmmm... if there are various stones placed at intervals at the bottom of the island, and then lots of stone arches connecting them, with the soil and so on on top of that. Or is that stupid?

Also, how would you repair the bottom of floating objects? If the skyships are hanging from stones, then they can't fit under the object with the passengers close enough to the bottom to do anything.

That makes sense. For optimal floating stone utilization, a city is a giant open-bottomed cathedral. The entire city is a single edifice.

That also solves the problem of repair: the base arches are sufficiently huge that ships can navigate through them. Thus, the entire underside of a sky city forms a dock. As usual, the city is vertically stratified with higher-caste individuals living on higher levels. You could take a City of Bones (Martha Wells) slant on things. If most of the water used in the city is from rain, there will be significant rationing. At the top of the city are the reservoirs (maximizing the potential energy). As it works its way down through the city's plumbing, it becomes more nasty, and dribbles out the bottom of the city as sewage. I suppose that when it's needed, the reservoirs would be directly replenished via sky ship.

[name_here]

They live over some sort of literally trackless tropical jungle, i HIGHLY doubt they're exactly short of water.

As for repair, that's actually a pretty good question. Specialized repair ships could manage it but take economically ineffcient amounts of metal/concrete/diamond/carbon nanotube(kidding)/anything light, strong, and expensive. If they trade with hive Moysa then aluminium is barely possible and too hideously expensive to use to make the other ships have internal floatstones. maaybe larger dedicated warships (if any) have them.

As for structure, i imagined a very thin plate of floatstone with other rock on top of it.

Also, the islands have many floatstones, thus the fact that they don't, you know, fly around. so they're made of a composite of a bunch of small stones not a giant stone.

[virgil]

Also, the islands have many floatstones, thus the fact that they don't, you know, fly around. so they're made of a composite of a bunch of small stones not a giant stone.

That fits with the idea that Redharkan doesn't have enough sky mages anymore; moving their islands just isn't physically possible due to lack of manpower that can change the focal point of every floatstone that makes up the basis of a single island (as you'd need to do it en masse to prevent architectural meltdown).

[Parthenon]

That makes sense. For optimal floating stone utilization, a city is a giant open-bottomed cathedral. The entire city is a single edifice.

Yeah, thats sort of what I was imagining. However, its completely different to any other ideas of floating islands I've ever seen or heard of.

That also solves the problem of repair: ....

It sort of solves repair, but not quite. If a floatstone is a metre tall, and the ship itself hangs 2 metres below (so as not to smack your head on the stone) then the roof is at least 3 metres above the repair workers. Not exactly conducive to working.

My thinking is that there are 2 kinds of skyships: hot air balloon type ships hanging from floatstones, and raft type things resting on top of floatstones. The second are only really really small and only used for delicate work and where the first type wouldn't fit- maybe slightly larger than a rowboat or canoe.

I think the main problem with having large skyships will be having problems coordinating multiple skymages each controlling one floatstone. No SHIELD style flying fortresses.

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They live over some sort of literally trackless tropical jungle, i HIGHLY doubt they're exactly short of water.

Not really the same thing. You might as well say that if you live near a river, why bother having water connected to your house? You're not exactly short of water.

In this case, it would be a matter of storing water for later use, and not having enough space to collect rainfall, especially in poorer areas where more people are crammed in.

In fact, the larger a city is, the more water has to be stored for people's use. Has the weight of the water been taken into consideration, or is it so much smaller than the weight of all the buildings as to not be worth caring about?

[Username17]

Interesting note: In celebration of not having any more tests or class until next Tuesday, I read The Sharing Knife by Lois Bujold. The Lakewalker tribes in that have a life detection ability called ground sense that works very similarly to the Senician life sense. Not a bad book for inspiration on ways to use that ability.

-Username17

[Beth_Naught]

My search-fu has failed to reveal whether this game's meant to be using the chakra system of seven elements, the Taoist five, or the bogstandard four plus aether/akasha/ku - I'm guessing the first of these?

One of the advantages of piecemeal construction is that there doesn't ever need to have been enough skymages to move a city around, especially if floatstones end up bound together via ritual or sharing magnetic domain or whatever. If you have to uncouple them the wreak havoc it's something that probably doesn't happen.

There wouldn't be enough water, even without that river prettily spilling over the side. Can an Earth mage Moses-tap a rock and yield a spring? If not, can an Earth mage multi-aspect into Water? Were there historic trade agreements for water sources with other societies? Do skymages mine glaciers (this one probably isn't enough either, in addition to being the least cushy work detail ever)?

I'm also kinda curious how far Earth magic is supposed to go (hence the orders of magnitude commentary). Hierarchs pretty clearly don't need metal if they can make weightless stone plated coats that are stronger than steel - it's the toilers in the fields who might have an iron machete that's contraband up on city top. And you've a fairly good reason to lift your cities out of harm's way if you have nothing that competes with mass produced munitions grade helmets and spear points. Redarkhan knights are going to be at least as well equipped as everyone else's, they just won't have much of an infantry.

It's also worth knowing if a wealthy house has sliding doors made of altered marble rather than mulberry paper, or if people favor crystal bowl and glass harmonica instrumentation in music, and so forth.

/edited to add

Also, cubes are apparently the least hip Pythagorean solid. Never knew

[IGTN]

My search-fu has failed to reveal whether this game's meant to be using the chakra system of seven elements, the Taoist five, or the bogstandard four plus aether/akasha/ku - I'm guessing the first of these?

Air, Death, Earth, Fire, Life, Void, Water.

I think the idea of the cities is that they are a whole mess of floatstones physically, but not magically, connected; unless you have a whole mess of Skymages acting in concert, you have to tear the city apart to move it.

The culture focus article is here.

[MartinHarper]

Also, cubes are apparently the least hip Pythagorean solid. Never knew

Cubes are for squares.

[Fallen Hero]

I think the floatstone strength ratio (1 m^3/4x8m 2 story building) is a little off.

There needs to be much more floatstone in my opinion. I personally imagine this as a city of skyscrapers and high-rises where there is only city, with all greenery growing in planters and very seldom if any.
However, I think there needs to be a higher support ratio.

[Username17]

I think the floatstone strength ratio (1 m^3/4x8m 2 story building) is a little off.

There needs to be much more floatstone in my opinion.

That's just an unavoidable result of stones supporting their own mass. Cubes are just much much more massive than useful shapes of any size. For example: a cubic meter of water weighs more than 14 people. If it takes large mounts of stone to support empty buildings, you wouldn't be able to store water or grain - because empty buildings don't really weigh very much and solid piles of just about anything do.

-Username17

[Parthenon]

I think the floatstone strength ratio (1 m^3/4x8m 2 story building) is a little off.

There needs to be much more floatstone in my opinion.

That's just an unavoidable result of stones supporting their own mass. Cubes are just much much more massive than useful shapes of any size. For example: a cubic meter of water weighs more than 14 people. If it takes large mounts of stone to support empty buildings, you wouldn't be able to store water or grain - because empty buildings don't really weigh very much and solid piles of just about anything do.

I'm not sure I understand this point. Does this mean that Fallen Hero wants floatstones to support less mass?

I was slightly worried about how much storage the islands could take anyway without reducing the storage. The city should have at least a few days food at any one time and enough water to last a couple of days since lifting water to the islands would be extremely difficult.

If you need a sculptor for each and every ship then you would need a prohibitively large amount for moving enough food if you were doing it with just-in-time schedules.

I'm thinking out a hypothetical situation and I don't know whether or not it'll prove my point. Recently been changed because I forgot to think and didn't realise the 1 floatstone == 6 tonnes

Imagine a city with 100,000 citizens. Assuming 4lbs of food per day each (source http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_poun ... t_each_day) , each day they will eat 200 tons or 181 tonnes of food.

Since a floatstone can carry 6 tonnes, the functional capacity is probably about 4 tons of food.

So, each day they will need 50 skyship loads of food. This will need 50 sculptors and create 50 records for the auditors. This then needs to be moved around the city, and there will be various records stating who has bought what and where they will all be going. Lots more records.

Basically what I'm saying is that there needs to be very large docks to deal with a minimum of 50-60 ships per day arriving and leaving. And that the auditors need to deal with a huge number of records.

This gives me a couple of questions.

How exactly is communication done? The skymages do it, yes, but is it couriered by skyships? Through magic mirrors? Messenger birds? Ansibles? Can you send paperwork through it?

What sort of processing power have they got? Given that the auditors perform a highly specialised job which will create a lot of records, how do they deal with these records? Are there large rooms filled with Auditors who just read and deal with forms? Is there a centralised data store?

How much of the paperwork is done by Auditors and how much by people under them. Is it a single Auditor as an overseer or lots of Auditors wandering around filling in forms?

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I think that having computers is a bad idea. I think the most powerful calculation device should be an abacus (still faster than a calculator). This means that large halls full of Auditors would probably be the best.

In terms of communications, I'd suggest that magic mirror type things would be best... Or, you could create buoys in the sky with mirrors or suchlike, and use those to have morse code like telegrams moving back and forth.

Is there teleportation? Probably not to make skyships the most useful and fastest form of travel.

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This post is getting huge so I'm going to stop here.

[Heath Robinson]

Apparently golems can see. I suggest golems on floatstone platforms using semaphore if magical communication is not used.

Alternatively, some kind of golem pairing ritual that enables them to act as a unidirectional, or bidirectional remote scribe system may be sufficiently infrastructure heavy that long range communication is costly and, hence, only going to serve metropoli and military infrastructure.

[virgil]

If you allow skymages to know precise locations of a particular floatstone, that alone allows for communication across vast distances; just move the rock like some kind of morse code signal. This would require a skymage at the rock to convey the message, but it would allow dissemination of information at incredible speed.

The infrastructure required would depend on the effort to track a floatstone. You'd still need a decent enough one even if a single skymage could keep track of a dozen stones at once, keeping enough attention to be alerted when a stone starts oscillating. Ideally, there would be a 'prime' stone that oscillates whenever major public announcements are made at proscribed times (which is when skymages know to 'tune' their radios for it).

Now, this very much doesn't work for discreet message delivery unless you're certain of not being monitored; such as using a non-stolen stone that isn't designated as a 'message stone', or you know when a designated stone isn't going to be watched on either end for a time.

I strongly suspect that ciphers would become a booming business in Redarhkan politics.

EDIT: Infrastructure would limit communication from the capital to outward if you do more than public announcements. Communication outposts would become vastly important in order to minimize requisite manpower.

[Fallen Hero]

I think the floatstone strength ratio (1 m^3/4x8m 2 story building) is a little off.

There needs to be much more floatstone in my opinion.

That's just an unavoidable result of stones supporting their own mass. Cubes are just much much more massive than useful shapes of any size. For example: a cubic meter of water weighs more than 14 people. If it takes large mounts of stone to support empty buildings, you wouldn't be able to store water or grain - because empty buildings don't really weigh very much and solid piles of just about anything do.

-Username17

I see your point. I'd assume though, at the least, that the floatstone would be manipulated to be covering the complete base of the building?

[JonSetanta]

http://www.onemanga.com/Mahou_Sensei_Negima%21/240/01/

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[Judging__Eagle]

I don't think that floatstone would be much use in mills. Or really much of any industrial process. You could dip the stones onto things providing great and relievable pressure - so they'll probably have more compact stuff than other cultures. And it's really good for transporting things long distances. But their industrial machinery would involve using a floatstone attached to a bucket to take things to the top of ramp, then dropping it down to liberate energy. I'm not sure that they could get more power doing that than just setting up a bunch of windmills on top (or bottom) of the floating islands. Certainly seems like the golems are much more important, even if they just slog about being less productive than a normal human.

Probably their best bet is textiles. Massively repetitive labor that is easily programmed into a golem, and a fair advantage for being able to drop several tonnes of crushing press on things. That and trade of course. I think that other nations pretty clearly have competitive advantage in metal work and agriculture.

-Username17

Emphasis mine.

People with smallish floatstone access can be the best metalsmiths in the world. Since they have the equivalent of the most bad-ass power-hammer ever (do a Google image search for Power Hammers to see other styles; they're a very old tool.