Airships. Some people like em, some don't. Airship Thread:

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I heard u BBs like high res schematics.

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>>47675813
How do they stay up?

These don't look gas filled,

This pic is an armored zeppelin, yours look... different OP.

>>47675920

What difference does it make? You really think strapping some ballons inside a fucking battleship would lift it up? Have you seen a real life zeppelin? The baloon is huge compared to the cabin and armor is fucking heavy so it's like slaping a ferrari sticker to a car an claiming it's more ferrari than the one without the sticker.

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>>47675950
>>47675881
>>47675868
>>47675851
>>47675822
>>47675813
Its like Ghibli and Last Exile had a baby... I'm wet.

>>47675955
I've never heard anyone give an even half decent scifi explanation either, what DOES lift them up?

>>47675920
go away.

Play NT OST:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=408tWOubRDM

Looking at these pics...
>I will never live in airship world...

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I'm not interested in your Dieselpunk. I'll post Edgy skyships in every single one of these threads until the setting gets the respect it deserves.

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Love 'em...

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>>47676028
man, those are my least favorite kind too...

But, hey in the name of tolerance. Welcome aboard skyfriend.

>>47676061
Thanks. To each his own.

>>47675969
>I've never heard anyone give an even half decent scifi explanation either, what DOES lift them up?

Your choices are basically
1: Unobtainium
2: Magic
3: I don't give a shit, armoured zeppelins are the coolest!

They're all valid.

>>47676027
Airships are entirely possible, just not on Earth.

>>47676189
ooooh science! pls educate me.

>>47676204
In order for an airship to actually float it has to weigh less than the area that would normally be taken up by atmospheric gas. Since on Earth we breath oxygen and nitrogen we're shit out of luck for trying to make a ship that doesn't either have a ton of gasses that we DON'T breath, or has to make a ton of weight compromises in order to float.

If we were to live on a planet with an atmosphere that was composed of gasses that were heavier than the air we breath, we could make vessels that float just because they're filled with the stuff we need to live.

On Mars the atmosphere is way too thin for us to make a vessel that was light enough to float just on air alone and not kill us from a lack of pressure.

HOWEVER, on Venus there's a point in its atmosphere that the pressure level is just right for us to live, and since it's made up roughly 90% carbon dioxide, we can get a vessel floating on Venus just because it has air in it.

Now, since breathable air alone is a lifting gas on Venus that makes helium or hydrogen into SUPER lifting gasses. As in, you can lift a fucking Soyuz rocket with just a few hydrogen balloons kind of lifting power.

You can build anything you want on Venus and it'll probably float. The only downside is that you need the outer hull to be acid resistant, but really that's not that big of a deal, we've got a laundry list of cheap acid resistant materials.

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>>47676310
Good to know!

I guess you could use some sort of scifi lift-machine as an explanation as well.

>>47676042
Hey, that project got paused/cancelled by Lockmart, but it's nearly finished in the UK now.

I don't have pics on me, but I have some from the last airship thread
http://archive.4plebs.org/tg/thread/47528700/#47536701

>>47675920
It's literally the fucking same thing in every setting with airships: "magic unobtainium powered engines" or alternatively "organs taken from flying whales" which is actually the same except the engine is unobtainium itself.

>>47676718
Magical floating rocks or crystals are also used sometimes.

>>47676718
>>47676761
Last Exile had a pretty cool soft scifi idea

http://lastexile.wikia.com/wiki/Claudia

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OP here, do you guys want me to keep going? I don't feel like much of tg has a boner for this like I do...

>>47676131
Personally, if I was in a game with them, I think it should be defined.

Fictional Lighter-than-Helium Gas? Ok, but we have to make sure there are no leaks. Also, is the gas lethal to humans?

Special metal that has massive lift/anti-grav when electrified? Ok, key is keeping the electric generators going, if they fail the ship falls out of the sky. Diesel-electric engines spewing smoke! Need the diesel to keep running too.

These aspects would also have an impact on ship design and battle tactics as well.

Maybe the electrified anti-grav metal can only reach a ceiling of 5,000 feet from sea level, so big mountains are still impassable, etc.

It doesn't need to be real or physics heavy, but to me it's part of the world as much as the cool art. It's all fuel to send the imagination racing!

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And now I have a bunch of smaller planes, all done by the same artist.

>>47676859
Reasonable enough. The types I've personally used have both been based heavily on enchantments. In the 1st case a large amount of runic stuff complete with large amounts of redundant magic circles. Certain portions of the critical hit table were re-fluffed to represent these circles being broken, though any boarding party could also do so deliberately.

The main limit of these ships is that they needed living mages on the ship to control it. Once enchanted it would just maintain current position near indefinitely (though weather could eventually destroy those circles), but mages were required to move it. Players encountered a floating wreck at one point and had intensely dangerous investigations.

The second type was powered by the good old magic crystal variety and latent local magic streams. Environmental magic was a huge part of that world as were spirits, and there were some simple rules for how much was around, and how quickly it ran out. So flying ships were basically really mana intensive spells. The crystals (condensed souls, but hey how bout you stop asking questions about that) were reserve power, capable of fueling a ship for X amount of hours in drained or null magic zones.

Both have been water ships, but in the sky, big and lumbering and using naval combat rules instead of dog fighting ones.

>>47676761
Again that's just unobtainium.

>>47676310
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3rhQc666Sg

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>>47675813

Best airship comin' through, out of the way peasants

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>>47677289
>The crystals (condensed souls, but hey how bout you stop asking questions about that)
tell me about the crystals

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>>47677644
That's pretty good

>>47677593
oh, you kill something over the seedling of a certain flower, sentient blood is more potent of course, until it germinates, and then it will grow into a blood flower, which while cared for normally with water and fertilizer is a bit finicky and hard to cultivate. Grow one to fruiting though, and you get little crystals which contain absurd amount of magical power.

Crushing a crystal would release the magic into the environment, or through a little ritual you could absorb it, which took some time, but was still way quicker than natural absorption.

>>47676310

What you're talking about is basically a Submarine, but in super dense gas instead of liquid.

anyone knows some airship centric system or something?
something to pull of some skies of arcadia shit, but dieselpunk

>inb4 gurps

>>47677058
>>47677071
>>47677085

The fact that this artist has different "nations" with different styles of aircraft gives me the impression that they're an awful lot of world building going on in that person's head. Would be a shame if that only existed in the form of artwork, but it's good artwork none the less.

>>47677943
Artist is awesome. Apparently he's had a few people proposition him to make games from the world he built, but it always falls apart. A shame too, this style could make some seriously good vidya content, but AAA studios are too busy wanking to FPS and cult favorites.

http://aoiwaffle0608.deviantart.com/?rnrd=179653

>>47677885

I've done it with Savage Worlds, but I can't say if it's any better or worse than GURPS. You're probably looking for a system dedicated to the topic, not fitting it into a generic system.

>>47677811
There really isn't much of a difference between a submarine and a rigid airship when the outside air isn't breathable.

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>>47677980

Just started checking his DA out, definitely impressed.

>>47677885
>>47677981
OP here, the reason I'm posting all this art is because I have a very rough system in dev atm. Ship combat rules getting out of hand though, tracking 3d movements with a sheet of paper is... not easy or fun.

>>47677811
>basically a Submarine
Please don't say this, as a former submariner the differences trigger me

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>>47677885

The Few is my goto for airborn/spacefighters/etc. games. Its set up for ww2 dogfighting, but that's pretty much what everyone pretends the other stuff is like too.

If you want to get more tactical, larger scale warships floating around blowing the crap out of each other, you can try and find a rules set for Leviathans. No longer supported but I hear good things about the rules set.

>>47678025
i think i can understand the whole altitude think

since its airship to airship intead of somethingK to the ground, why not use 100m highter than enemy/initial altitude, for example? wouldnt it be easier?

just thowing ideas here

>>47678025

Attack Vector Tactical does hard 3d space combat for actual if you want to look at a rules set for inspiration.

But if you get too realistic/3d with airships as presented, mostly like ww1-2 battleships firing broadsides, it stops making much sense fast.

>>47678025
>tracking 3d movements with a sheet of paper is... not easy or fun

I imagine. I'm thinking about it as a normal flat grid like any other map you'd use for minis in an RPG, but where each ship has an "altitude" coordinate in addition to its position on the game board. the board wouldn't represent it visually, but you could have two ships occupying the same space but at different altitudes.

Of course, moving a humanoid figure on a grid wouldn't accurately portray how a massive warship handles. They wouldn't exactly be able to change direction on a dime.

>>47676645
seems more like a spaceship to me

>>47678025
Assuming everything is within the lower layers of the atmosphere you really only need vague altitude bands.

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>>47678133
>>47678138
>>47678199
>>47678218
Yeah, i've thought of going pure simulation, and also of far abstractism. Neither works well, now to just find the perfect balance of realism and rules-light. Add in that fighters will be skirmishing meanwhile and plenty of boarding action (my setting will be boarding heavy because FUCK YES ziplines down to enemy airship, cutter tool to punch through carapace, running around breaching doors, fucking shit up, kidnap captain.) And things get really confusing. Honestly, focusing on the world rules as a whole, will probably do combat last, as the setting is being built to be just as accommodating for a mercantile (weight to cost ratios of goods, tax areas, trade routes and jet stream) or political (trying to have a rich history for each nation in the world, as well as a mysterious precursor civilization that left ruins) campaign, as it is for combat.

>>47678288
>accommodating for a mercantile (weight to cost ratios of goods, tax areas, trade routes and jet stream) or political (trying to have a rich history for each nation in the world

I've always wanted to do airships with economics, good luck to you.

>>47678288
if you >>47678288
are going everthing happens in the skies, try to go with altitude relative to enemy/object/giant evil mosquito or what you have

it will keep it managable i think

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>>47678318
Thanks! I've been working on it slowly, maybe have beta rules down soon for the world, probably sans combat like I said. Totally classless as an RPG characterwise, with a dots system similar to whitewolf, though maybe that comparison is a bad idea since dicepools work differently.

The MAJOR feature I'm working on, is completely random charts for EVERYTHING, so as a DM, you can run a game without having a story in mind, or overlay the story over the actions of the world. Random charts for daily weather, global politics, tax changes, port fees, pirates!, military patrols, stowaways, getting your cargo hold robbed while drinking in a port town, disease, local megafauna (giant fucking avians), lost technology hunts, and more!

Plus, I want to make sure theres an extensive system for tile by tile building of your airship. Purposefully reinforce certain parts of the ship to make breaching more difficult, all the while remembering weight restrictions....

Lots of work to be done.

>>47678217
It's probably an old trope, but having the first 'airship' be the spaceship the humans arrived in is great. Everything else is an inferior copy by people that don't really understand the technology but can figure out a few pieces of it.

>>47678412
Last exile is the only place that did that afaik, but its a GREAT trope if it is one. Honestly, the only real airship trope that's played out, is the association between airships and steampunk. I don't even mind steampunk its just... been tainted for me.

>>47678412
"Well, we don't know what they were using to power their anti-gravity drive back then and there's definitely none left, but we've been doing okay with whale oil and coal so far."

>>47678384
if you ever got it together, do post it here

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>>47678462
That's just because steampunk routinely degenerates into a mess of meaningless gears, brass and tophats without consideration for actual age of steam technology.

Actual victorian era warships are fucking great, they have hugely varied designs, they're got guns all over them, have sexy curves, belch clouds of black smoke and most of them had fucking rams.

But instead of building their airships on that, most shitty steampunk settings just dangle a boat from a balloon.

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>>47678624
toot toot motherfucker it's 1887 and I have 27 guns and six torpedo tubes

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>>47678412
Last Exile certainly comes to mind, in a way.

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Man this thread is good, recently got a wwl-ll kick and was thinking about making a setting. Perhaps somthing along the lines of valkeria chronicles meets skies of arcadia.

tell me anons, would it be a better idea for the stereotypical 'sky islands' or should the airships simply be a part of a larger entity?
Kinda like the idea of a party getting and repairing a early wwll kind of tank like pic related.

>>47679408
my idea, large continent size islants floating low, over a cloud sea, and many small island/ archipellagos on mid/high alts, that way you get all

plus a journey into the abyssal surface that is ground level is more likely
but thats just me

>>47679408
The tank idea is cool. If they've got a big enough ship they can load it on there.

>>47679475
that could work, perhaps have the 'cloud sea' be some kind of toxic no go zone.

Better question then. What should the surface be like?

>>47679408
>tell me anons, would it be a better idea for the stereotypical 'sky islands' or should the airships simply be a part of a larger entity?
Personally, I'm not actually all that fond of sky islands, so I'd recommend having a normal landmass, and airships being only part of a larger army. If you want, you can have some natural or artificial flying islands above the normal landmass: kinda Miyazaki's Laputa or Howl style.

>>47679475
skis of arcadia?

>>47679566
IF its toxic, old not-quite rotten skyscrappers and buldings, wrecks of battles both of before and after humans got to the skies, big ol' beasts, all kinds of very advaced tech?

its an abyss, you can fill it with whatever you want

im on the old humanity ruins side

>>47679645
also giant flying abyssal fish,
nothing can says this place aint right like some truck sized land anglerfish

>>47679827
im now thinking the gas harvested for airships come from flying fish... fish farm / fishing industry, ho!

>>47676028
>Edgy

Edgedancer was the best ship.

Fucking fight me.

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OP here, in my setting, there are no flying islands, as that begs the question, what keeps them flying, and the setting is medium soft scifi. Regular landmasses, on a mostly regular world. The archipelago status of the land distribution however, paired with the fact that theres 2 moons (making for less predictable, more violent tides and waves) in addition to some biogenetically engineered megafauna (left by the starfaring people's that originally settled the planet) and a toxic global bloom of some sort of algae like organism (also the legacy of some bio warfare far in the past) leaves the seas nigh untraversable, hence the necessity for airships.

Smaller airships and even planes will do for short journeys, but only larger craft can navigate the major (and majorly stormy) jetstream path of the planet's skies.

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>>47680113
I guess its worth pointing out that the world is like 50% of the world of Nausicaa: Valley of the Wind status deadworld. Perhaps right on the brink of saveable still. There's defintely a toxic jungle as well that I pretty much stole from that movie, however its not as infectious as in Nausicaa, and its spores don't produce new toxic jungle elsewhere, its just toxic because its growing on some nasty shit.

>>47680113
I like the two moon idea.

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>>47680318
The two moons actually play a much larger role in terms of culturebuilding. Or more accurately, one of them. I'm actually thinking it maybe a moon of ANOTHER planet, or perhaps just another planet, as its patterns are less predicable (haven't gotten to how much i want to explain this or leave it as a spooky mystery).

The only form of "magic" or "psionics" in the game, is a mutation (once again likely a legacy of the first humans on the planet meddling with genetic engineering) that allows one to use their brain more efficiently, this effect being amplified the closer said strangely-orbiting moon gets to the planet. The powers wax and wane depending on the moons proximity to the planet, enhancing brain function, empathy, instincts and even allowing these individuals to detect the presence of pheromones in the air by their slight changes in body chemistry.

The problem is, when the moon gets TOO close, their powers start to get unmanageable, emotions flow more vividly and sometimes they can go mad. And on the rare occasion it gets too too close... pop. every single individual with the mutation (about 1 per 10,000 of the world population) just dies. Their brain fries from too much cosmic energy, and they all perish. And since in many places this "power" is part of religion, many of the different faiths will have vast libraries of knowledge from these people, as to train the next generation of "psions". Still working on a good name for "those people".

Its presumable that one of these "psions" constructed the first airship lift engine (or at least appropriated its design properly from ancient technology) in a heightened state of awareness.

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>>47679170
Heh, 'armed'

>>47680103
Yes it was. In my headcanon the Edgedancer and her crew flew around being badass for a couple of years before fucking Caterbird showed up for the plot of the third book. That ship really was a beauty and didn't deserve to die so quickly.

>>47675822
I'm going to attempt to model this in google sketchup... wish me luck.

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Bump

Now hear me out. What if instead of floating islands or normal landmass, the land drifted across the sea?

Think of it, a world with floating (in water) islands and continents (likely formed by islands colliding) Sea travel would be near impossible in long distances because you couldn't find your way back so airships came along.

aslo skyfish because fantasy and fuck you I like skyfish.

>>47681132
I give up. Google sketchup is an obfuscated piece of shit.

Plus how do I take anything with the word ketchup in it seriously...

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>>47681483
Yeah, and skyfish always bring along the ability to use their float organs to make ships float as well.

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>>47679827
>>47679645
Maybe there's a race of humanoid anglerfish down there like pick related.

>>47681605
remant civilization of the old human, tecnologicaly the same level but access to super powerful ancient relic ships

if them invading isnt a high level/endgame material, i dont know what it is

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>>47678624
post more qt hotels

>>47681676
>"These days no one travels down very far past the light. Expeditions and those foolish enough to try speak of great leviathan like creatures, giant ruin metal constructs, and the dreaded hostile black ships who are silent to all attempts to hail"

>>47681800
>even so, such incredible tresures, lad! frigates that leave battleships look like mere tincans, machines of unthinkable toughness and power, statues of gold and silver, rubyes the size of you head!, if that aint worthy of adventure i dont know what it is!

>>47681800
>>47681874
20000 leagues above the sea

>>47681964
>20 kilometers below the clouds
now that sounds nice

>>47676786
I'm annoyed they forgot how to make computers and the like but remembered how to make primitive anti-gravity machines.

>>47682631
They didn't, they never knew. The guild controls all the Ship Units, so if you piss them off, they pull the enginge from your ship, it returns to them, and you fall from the sky.

The guild keeps all the information from everyone.

I'm impressed at just how many of these pictures there are. I love the style, thanks for posting them Anon.

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>>47681727
Here's a big hotel

>>47684000
Me too @_@ Now I can't find anything better. Its like my favorite parts of ghibli, minus my not so favorite parts, like what he COULD have done should he have chosen to make more mature movies.

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>>47684137

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USS Macon, one of the very few real life airborne aircraft carriers.

>>47684153
U U
U U

>>47683014
That's not a very well thought out carrier, and the scale just seems way off. If there's an elevator and hangar, it doesn't look big enough for more than 2 planes even without the wings.

It looks like it's designed for speed, so maybe the purpose is to outflank the enemy and launch an unexpected strike with a tiny wing of attack aircraft, like the I-400 submarines. At any rate, you probably wouldn't be able to land aircraft on that flying off deck, so they're non-recoverable.

>>47684391
probably a deploy and forget carrier like you said
its a waste of resources but probs are that the plane has some amazing range, if you can lift a carrier kilometers up in the sky...

realisticaly, the guy who drew it had no idea o how carriers work

>>47684433
>>47684391
How to make airborne aircraft carriers work

>No runway: Planes drop straight down out of the airship to get their initial speed boost from gravity rather than a catapult/their own engine.
>Recovery hook of a style like >>47684176
>Carrier drops them at high altitude, then drops. They do their mission and get recovered down low, so no need to waste fuel climbing at all.

>>47676028
the books were great, although id say the setting really is edgy. Reminds me to go back and re-buy/read them, thanks.

>>47684514
hmm, gonna make note of that. thanks anon.

>>47684514
>Planes drop straight down out of the airship to get their initial speed boost from gravity rather than a catapult/their own engine.
If you've got a hook/crane arrangement you could lower the plane from the hangar, start the engine and then release it when it's up to speed. Seems safer than trying to start the engine while falling.

>>47684514
they whould be very wide, and floor(?) heavy, with very high power/capacity engines and light armor to float so much at such high alts

problem would be fighters and bomber that cant might not be able too climb so damn high

>>47684587
You can start the engine before dropping, of course.

Also: Folding wings that only unfold once you're lowered(NOT while you're falling)

>>47684628
Take a look at >>47684176

That zeppelin carries four scout planes and deploys them by dropping. Notice how high over New York City it is.

>>47684646
still feels like its gotta climb way too high to work in airship to airship battle

>>47684673
There's a reason that aircraft carriers made battleships obsolete. Once you have airborne aircraft carriers, they should replace battleships as the main combatant.

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Flying sail-ships because magic.

>>47684685
yeah, then strenghtening the fighters till they can OHK other fighters and carrier with ease, and back to AA specialiced cruisers

sounds like a good growth

>>47684733
It's basically what happened.

>>47684685
They'd have different ceilings of operation. Carriers would fly higher, since it's harder for shells to fly upwards, and they'd launch planes to attack battleships from above.

Battleships would fly lower because they're far more heavily armored and it's harder to lift them, but they'd be much stronger at attacking ground targets because you could continuously shell away. Eventually their guns would just aim up and down, not horizontally.

The biggest problem flying carriers would have is recovering their planes. They'd probably have a high loss rate in prolonged combat, and you'd see higher atmosphere airships designed to take on carriers from above the clouds, like submarines or destroyers, or maybe a lighter class of carrier that divebombs them without warning.

>>47684768
plus its good on whateve the setting you wanna thow
>i want battleships everywhere!
interwar/early ww2 time analoge
>fighter where is at
after big war
>i heart cruisers!
bit modernish times

>>47684808
>stealth carriers launching stealth bombers to slip past a carriers escorts and wreck it with a single bomb
Awesome

>>47684808
>>47684842
I'm hard.

So I guess the military boogeyman would be an airship with amazing radar, targeting systems and huge guns.

It wouldn't need speed or armor, it'd lurk in a fogbank a long way away and fire a single salvo at an airship, inflicting massive damage before disappearing again, and nobody would ever see it.

>>47684587
True but having the option to just dump your fighters might be preferable in a scenario where you don't have time to let them hang there while they warm up. Might be more risky for them but they'd be screwed anyways if their carrier is shot down.

>>47686225
oh sweet, anyone else have interiors?

>>47685231
You always need speed. Ships that are trivially outmaneuvered get chased down and killed and slow down the rest of their fleet.

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Dropping what I've got.

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>>47686718
A little more unrealistic this time around.

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>>47686728
This is technically more of an Ekranoplan than an airship, but similar concept.

>>47686728
What.... is that?

And what section keeps it up?

>>47686728
>>47686718
>>47686759

Another Ekranoplan/WIG.

If you like this, you should check out the artist's dA:

http://wingsofwrath.deviantart.com/

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>>47686780
One more!

>>47686762
>What.... is that?
>And what section keeps it up?
darned if I know.

>>47686762
The thing in the middle labeled "High pressure steam chamber".

>>47686886
I think that's part of the powerplant. Maybe.

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>>47686414

>>47686928
In a ship it's a propulsion plant, not a power plant.

And the thing in the middle is the propulsion component, I looked on the deviantart page.

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>>47687055

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>>47687069

>>47686886
And high pressured steam does what to make a ship float? It can turn a turbine, but, there's no turbine on that thing.

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>>47681800
Automatons from a forgotten age roam the lower atmosphere

>>47687097
>I just know that hydrogen is supposed to be pumped into a chamber together with superheated steam and together they make some plates inside vibrate at a certain frequency that makes them fly. Basically, it's "Applied Phlebotinum".
>It makes about as much sense as "Atlantean technology", "Martian technology", "cavorite", or other steampunk gimmicks for making ships fly that exist out there, but since this universe ranks pretty "soft" on the "Mohs Scale Of Science Fiction Hardness" and these ships are not my design anyway, I don't worry too much about it.

that's what the artist who drew it said on the deviantart page, it was a comission for some tabletop game and didn't really know any more about.

>>47684137
>>47684159
I am really glad this thread didn't go without SOMEONE posting from the best dieslepunk show ever. This was THE ship to get me into Airships.

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>TFW NO IRON VULTURE
This is my first airship ever, the 80's had the best shit.

>>47688764
Oh wait I mistook the Goliath for the Iron Vulture. I feel so bad now.

>>47687092
pretty sure this is from the Leviathan series

This thread reminded me of an old anime movie I can't remember the name of. It follows the life of a boy living on some airship. There's a cool scene where the kid and his friend get in these gun pods and shoot at the flyin' grasshopper plane things. The kid also becomes an airship pirate at some point I believe. Theres a floating whale-contraption plot device. They real in floating water bubbles from the deck of the airship. Anyone recognize this?

>>47684155
Well some of his concepts are straight out of the manga version of Nausicaa

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>>47689487
I'd almost say that sounds like Elemental Gelade. But that was a series, not a movie, and it came out in 2005

>>47689790
I don't think so. It had a very steampunk theme to it I think. I'll look into it more.

>>47689487
Anon, I've seen a lot of anime and I have no fucking idea what you're talking about.

>>47689921

I recall a few specific scenes really. The boy had this sort of mischievous friend in childhood. They went to go play in these .30 cal gun pods when these flying machine gun-armed locust things attacked. The boy's friend ends up getting his turret pod shot up and his arm hit. I recall these flying locust/grasshopper things being menaced and that they came from a rarely sighted flying mechanical whale airship.

There's one scene of the main character and this old dude, family presumably, "fishing" on top of the air-ship. They throw their lines into these big floating bubbles of water.

I don't recall ever seeing the actual ground in the show/movie. It took place all in-air I believe. The main character was infatuated with some girl I think. He became a sort of pirate for a stint at one point. Trying to "find his place" I believe. That's really all I can recall. This can't seriously be some fever-dreamed Deja vu I'm having.

>>47676718
If you're gonna boil half the concepts down into "unobtanium" yeah everything's going to be same.

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>>47689961
Welp, I tried searching and couldn't find anything. But at least I know what I'm watching tonight.

>>47690169
>TFW it's planelegs
I hate that anime universe so much

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>>47678624
Fucking this.
It's almost un-explainable but I know the exact feeling. I have to correct people almost every time I mention steampunk because a mess of gears obviously isn't.

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>>47692494
also dumping what pics I got

>>47675969
If we're going sci-fi I'd go with "it's a different planet with a denser atmospheric makeup" hence all the gasmasks and rebreathers.

>>47692562
Maybe a high Sulfur hexafluoride content.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PJTq2xQiQ0

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>>47692529

now that i think about it there is a fuckton of steampunk crap, but dieselpunk i think i can count'em with one hand

where the fuck is all the dieselpunk things?

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>>47692593

>>47692591
Jesus, if you had a sulfur hexaflouride atmosphere you could float castles without even needing an envelope of air. You could probably even float fucking LANDMASSES if you filled their cores with Helium or even Neon.

>>47676859
>Fictional Lighter-than-Helium
Hydrogen gas is very real, but only twice the lift of Helium.

>>47692718
And lithium would provide a neat exothermic power resource. Oh and it's a greenhouse gas so the environment would be pretty barren and resource scarcity would explain the wars.

Also the higher the altitude the more you need an airplane vs a blimp, so you can have different types of ships like "submarines" and spy planes.

All kinds of fun shit.

>>47692793
I'm pretty sure in a sulfur hexaflouride atmosphere you'd be hard pressed to find a point in that atmosphere where you wouldn't float perfectly.

At 8 times the density of air you'd need the atmosphere to be an 8th of 1atm to even begin to make 1 atm of air NOT a lifting gas.

>>47692904
Yeah it would work more like water and those big heavy battleships from up here >>47676283 floating more on the invisible "surface" of the sulfur layer. It would also explain why all the battleships are basically airborne ocean vessels floating at roughly the same altitude.

>>47687474
What show is that, I want to know.

>>47677885
Closest thing I know of is 'Warbirds'. It's more focused on fighters than airships, but the system does have rules for airships. It wouldn't be hard to do a few custom rules for an airship game.

>>47693452
I thought it was the Iron Vulture from Tail Spin, so I was wrong to begin with.

hm, good to see this thread still going.

Tell me ya'll. full ww1-2 guns, or fantasy melee with gun support.

>>47694009
id like the idea of melee with WW1-2 guns
its sounds more fun

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>>47694009
Do it properly and have muzzle loading naval rifles.

>>47675920
Cavorite. Almost literally in some cases.

>>47694073
This was a thing. he naval cutlass didn't exit service with the US navy until the early 1940s.

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>>47694009
>>47694073

WW1 era/style or earlier shotguns/rifles/pistols might be cool. I'm thinking boarding actions in close quarters where there are guns, but swords and bayonets are certainly not impractical.

Oh, and you're on an airship. So having high velocity rifle rounds passing through the ship might be a problem. Shotguns and pistols would be favorable because they penetrate less, but take a while to reload, which may lead to melee combat.

>>47694009
Inter-war guns might be the way to go. WWI battleships still manually loaded bags of cordite behind the projectile rather than having it all encased in a single shell.

Think about the rate of fire you want to have and build the technology around that. Slower loading might mean more guns, so that could be a factor in your decision too.

>>47692603

Nobody gives a shit about dieslepunk because its pmuch modernism with fins

Nerds are bad at a e s t h e t i c s so they go for steampunk to pretend they're fancy by having old shit covered in more shit that also has boobs rather than dieslepunk stuff, which is mostly just suits or undershirts for when you're alone at home and none of the other 1920s-1950s american puritans can see you. Its not flashy enough, and doesn't come with fake britsh accents to be pseudointellectual with.

>>47676552
I really dig these Infinite sky settings with floating islands/continents a lot

>>47694279
thats fucking bad, dieselplunk have the same if not more potential for interesting stories

the adventures of some junkers, a wrong man in a bad time, the bullshit of company life and a fuckton of basics i forget

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>>47694258
World war two battleships did too. A giant cartridge would not be practical.

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>>47694437
Well, up to a certain caliber.

>>47694595
Yes autoloaders existed for small caliber guns, but that would be impractical on big guns.

There are some that put the powder in metal containers instead of canvas bags. It's probably safer but extra weight.

>>47694437
I think even modern big guns (like howitzers) do that because giant cartridges are simply stupid.

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>>47694691
Fun fact! The Iowa class was used through the 80s, and was even armed with nuclear shells at one point. There were several plans to modernize it with flight decks and VLS cells, but it was deemed uneconomical.

>>47694691
There's also the fact that when loading artillery you have all different kinds of shells (like cluster bombs, HE, illumination, whatever) and having each one of them come with it's own integrated propellant would be nuisance. Also, I'm not expert on artillery, but I'd figure different amount of propellant is used to shoot at different ranges.

>>47694749
>the age of aviation battleships

bullshit aside on a airship steing a aviation anything would be pretty good

>>47694691
>>47694766
Alright, time to settle this mess.
Cartridges aren't stupid, why would you not want a higher rate of fire? The weight just get's impractical at a certain size, but that's when mechanization comes in.
And as for different kinds, all shells come with the necessary mixture, it's only a matter of calculating the angle of the gun.

>>47694805
More like essential. Without it you wouldn't even have lifeboats.

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>>47694830
And visual example.

>>47694836
Parachutes should do the trick for those.

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>>47694845
>lovethegun

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>>47694830
Still for some reason even modern artillery always uses shells without integrated propellant, so there must be something that makes them bad for artillery usage.

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These designs never happened because keeping the Iowas running would have been too expensive and required too much crew. Missile warfare makes large ships a liability. Even if raillguns bring naval gun combat back, it's unlikely we'll see anything larger than a cruiser. You just need a nuclear reactor and one or two raillguns. They can fire quickly so there is no need for extra barrels, nor do you need large armored magazines for the powder.

Currently the standard warship seems to be the frigate, armed with a 5 inch gun, CIWS system, VLS cells, A helipad, and optional torpedo tubes. Sometimes they call it a destroyer, but size wise it's a frigate and role wise it's a cruiser. Adding raillguns, lasers, and stealth too it won't change much. Although it would be interesting to see them become semi-submersible to increase survivability.

>>47694881
Depends who you ask, the British tanks don't use integrated and americans do, it's like with auto-loaders, some don't deem it necessary for one reason or another
.

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>>47694883
>Missile warfare makes large ships a liability.
So you say.

>>47694874
If there's a ground in the setting, or it isn't covered in water or some horrible gas or a desolate wasteland, yes, but there's generally a decent excuse for all-airship settings.

>>47694924
is that laser better than shooting bullets or another missile at it?

>>47694935
I was kinda pondering if nations would just incorporate a parachute into the standard uniform or not.

>>47694924
You can mount that same laser on a smaller ship.

Also, hypersonic sea skimming missiles are much harder to lase out of the sky. The one in that video is laughably slow.

>>47694945
Lasers are better, particularly when the missile will only be over the horizon for a fraction of a second, but it's still better to not be detected, or be less expensive than the missile they are shooting at you.

>>47694945
No. Navies are pushing to develop laser based CIWS, but they're currently limited by the power output of the lasers, which just isn't high enough to make them viable just yet. Probably going to have to wait another 10+ years on that one.

Also gun based CIWS actually isn't very effective at taking out missiles either, particularly modern missiles.

>>47695035
Actually I heard that laser CIWS are more or less ready for prime time now. Already shooting down UAVs and rockets. Modern warships have plenty of power, even without a reactor.

The weapon system that's still having problems is raillguns. The rails wear out too quickly to deliver the kind of sustained firepower promised.

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>>47695081
>>47695035

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_Weapon_System

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/this-is-why-the-navy-cant-have-nice-railguns

Raillguns use more power than lasers. You can bolt a laser onto a regular frigate or truck and power it from the diesel generator. But a raillgun will need a nuclear reactor or a fuckton of capacitors.

>>47695155
so unless they manage to pull of some star wars blasters out their asses they are stuck with nuclear railgun heavy cruisers/battleships

awesome, yes but missile defense how
it IS a floating nuke

>>47695325
>it IS a floating nuke
Actually no. The nuclear materials used for reactors just isn't enriched enough to go boom. Get breached and it can get radioactive as fuck, depending on the safety measures the navy gives out, but no there ain't gonna be no mushroom cloud.

>>47695081
>>47695155
It's an issue of the ship not being able to supply power, it's that current solid state laser systems don't have high enough power output to actually be viable as a CIWS system. Inflicting damage on UAVs and detonating an artillery shell requires much, much less power than actually stopping a missile.

>>47695403
It's still a good defense against slow moving rockets and UAVs. And a more mature technology than raillguns.

>>47695431
which is great, but it still occupies the same amount of space as a gun based CIWS, which can also shoot slow moving rockets and UAVs and can also destroy missiles.

There will be a point where gun based CIWS just gets totally replaced by laser CIWS, but it's not quite here yet.

>>47677459
Personally I always liked the Falcon or the Highwind more.

After a bit of thinking of what kind of cultures could develop i have a basic idea I wanna toss to you anons. Not gonna lie, it kinda ended up as a not! Christian based thing.

Im thinking of floating, moving islands over a sea of dense, black water. Basically the creation myth goes that in the past all water was good, but before men could be created a servant of the creator was cast down to the fledgling world, his blood tainting the seas into a dense sludge. Men arose from the last remaining good water, using it up and leaving their home barren. The creator saw this and sent his son, not! Jesus, down to their land to weep. His tears were drunk by the barren earth and deep below it grew into an endless aquifer. The people learned to harness the sacred winds in mills to drill and pull forth the life giving water.

Gust a basic concept but still, Im thinking i would use the dark sea water as the airship and vehicle fuel. Alchemist tampered of course not base. So i cant really see these guys using it since its literally evil blood to them.

Could tamed skyfish riders and balloon defense platforms hold off an airship fleet you think? definitely cant see them being aggressive.

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>>47694766
>I'm not expert on artillery, but I'd figure different amount of propellant is used to shoot at different ranges.
You figure correctly.
Pic related is a comparison of the current MACS charges used in 155mm howitzers to the old "bag" system of color-coded powders.
With MACS, we can just use the correct number of increments, with no waste, as every Hotel is identical to every other Hotel, and every Lima is identical to every other Lima. With the old bags you had to dispose of any excess off of a charge, since each segment of the bag contained a different amount of propellant. So the 6th and 7th portion of a White Bag, for example, couldn't be used to fire a 2 White Bag mission.

>>47696648
Pic related here is a 105mm M1 HE shell. It's what's called "semi-fixed". The round can be removed from the case, and the amount of powder adjusted by removing excess bags (visible in the pic), then the round placed back in the case for firing.

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>>47694986
>You can mount that same laser on a smaller ship
Yeah, A destroyer, so it could fulfill it's initial purpose.
>artillery shell requires much, much less power than actually stopping a missile.
I find that hard to believe.

Also, It is not likely that lasers will become primary weapons as they are inefficient compared to kinetic weapons and lack the ability to strike around the curvature of the earth.

Theoretically, a laser CIWS system could throw naval warfare back to tactics used 80 years ago and make most all ships today obsolete, it is unlikely this will happen anytime soon as introducing such a weapon would cause an arms race, and it's not necessary.

Also, out of curiosity, say there was a cannon that was a hybrid of powder-magnetic propulsion, powder for the first charge and magnetic rails to give it some more push, would that be viable?

>>47694945
Bullets I don't know but a missile would need flight correction, has very limited storage and can itself be intercepted.

A laser is not a ballistic weapon and essentially only needs a good aimbot and has to be mounted on a fast and nimble mount.

It is however still somewhat reliant on perfect weather conditions.

>>47698011
dont think it is imposible, hell it colud be the stopgap for smaller railguns for smaller ships/instalations

i doubt that the enginiering a barrel tough enough to resist both the chemicals, protect the magnets and let the work unimpeded its gonna be any easy

>>47698011
A hybrid chemical/railgun might be possible but I'm not sure it would be worth it. Your rail will degrade faster than the rest of the barrel due to the massive stresses that are placed on it during firing, you won't be able to get the same muzzle velocity (unless you build a gun twice over again the length of a normal one, which has issues of its own) and your round will have to be invented for that gun and will only work for that gun and it's peculiar method of firing. I'd say that it's possible but not probable.

>>47676028
Fuuuuuck I remember these books. They went to shit after 9.

>>47684391
The creator just handwaved it with Martian anti-gravitational technology.

>>47694741
Good.
She just doesn't feel the same without the C turret.

>>47676310

Bot true. Hybrid airship is totally viable.
It use both gas and wings to generate lift.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_airship

>>47698011
>I find that hard to believe.
And you'd be wrong. An artillery shell is a thin casing full of explosive, a laser CIWS defeats an artillery shell by heating up the explosive until it detonates. It doesn't even need to penetrate through the casing to do this.

This isn't possible with a missile because the warhead is typically situated pretty far back (and fairly deep inside in the case of larger missiles) in the airframe, behind the guidance system and electronics.

Given the profile the missile is likely to present (head on) the way a laser is most likely to defeat the missile is by destroying the guidance system, since that's the first critical component the beam is going to come into contact with, in order to do that it has to physically burn through the nose cone before they can damage the guidance system. Unfortunately for a laser anti-shipping missiles very often have a heat-resistant ceramic radomes for a nose cone.

A laser that can detonate an artillery shell in 2 seconds will have much more difficulty against an actual missile, particularly a large, sophisticated anti-shipping missile.

>>47704602
Hybrid airships still contain a good portion of gasses that are not breathable, they just decrease the amount of gas needed by adding a system that always has to be running to get the airship floating. That's still a compromise.

>>47704640
Not to mention that shells fly in nice graceful ballistic arcs, while anti-shipping missiles fly at super or hypersonic velocities a few meters above sea level. By the time it's over the horizon, it's already too late.

Really the only defense here is to have your ship cost less than the missile. Hence why large warships are a liability.

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>>47704640
>An artillery shell is a thin casing
Compared to what?

>>47704702
>Hence why large warships are a liability.
For now.

>>47704746
Compared to what's required to prevent plastic bonded explosive from reaching its flashpoint.

>>47704750
>For now
>Implying the trend isn't going the other direction.

The only reason to build big ships now is to have a flight deck. There are already missiles that can fuck up entire carrier groups, and if lasers get better they could make airplanes useless. The result will be missile boats and cruisers with raillguns, and lasers. Just big enough to mount a reactor to power the weapons. Make them bigger and you will increase cost and decrease survivability without increasing capability.

>>47704853
That wouldn't even potentially happen until you have multi-megawatt range solid state lasers capable of being carried by a medium sized surface combatant.

>>47704835
Then these images must be very misleading.
>>47704853
Bigger ships mean bigger guns, and a measure of survivability, which is more than the current gen can offer.

>>47692494
That's not steampunk... do you see any smokestacks for the steam to go? I don't.

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>>47704922
Even without that, anti-ship missiles severely outpace CIWS technology. By the time it takes your CIWS gun to aim at the incoming missile, it has already passed over the horizon and closed the distance.


>>47704977
There is no need for bigger guns, a single raillgun can obtain a higher rate of fire than an triple turret, with greater range and accuracy. As for survivability, larger ships are larger targets, armor won't do much against nuclear warheads. It's better to be small and expendable, harder to spot and not worth wasting a missile on.

>>47692593
Once again. Dieselpunk. Do you see the smoke from that tank? It's black, not steam. Jesus you give a
>>47692494
Comment, where you say you have to correct people, but you don't even know the genre yourself.

>>47705015
maybe it goes into another dimension? Maybe that's how the anti-gravity machine works.

>>47693452
It's the Goliath from Castle in the Sky

>>47705049
A larger railgun or several, or somewhere inbetween would be much more desirable than one 'normal size railgun'.

Do you know nothing of naval combat? No vessel is 'expendable', smaller vessels are more acceptable yes but non are 'expendable'.
Actually they dropped nukes on several vessels to minimal effect, the radiation was a bigger threat.
And in this case, with this specific projectile, it will likely penetrate with minimal damage.
The small vessel, with no armor, equipped with a railgun, not worth a missile. Don't go into officer school.

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>>47705212
>dropped nukes on several vessels
Exhibit A.

>>47705323
>Sailors have to be reminded not to take bits of radioactive ship with them.

Made me lol more than it should.

>>47705333
It was a different time.
>The Hell do radios have to do with bombs?

On a side note, I have the webm of soldiers walking into a nuclear explosion, but I can't see which one it is, I assure you it's inclusion would have been humorous.

mmm hairships.

flairships?

>>47692769
LIES

>>47694883

No, NUKES make large warships a liability. Anti-ship missiles can't penetrate BB belt armor. You'd want to upgrade anti-torpedo bulges though.

>>47704640

No, a missile is a thin casing around explosives, both propellant and warhead.

An artillery shell is relatively heavily armored so as to endure the acceleration of being fired. That's why artillery shells tend to have less explosive filler than a comparably sized mortar round or missile warhead.

And that's just landbound artillery. Naval artillery tends to utilize even more robustly built armor piercing munitions.

Also, your 'low aspect' missile will be fragged when the laser melts off its control surfaces.

>>47695155
Problems with lasers is is that you can only put so much power in the beam before it turns the air it's going through into plasma and the entire beam scatters and becomes completely useless.

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They made a WWI-era-ish airship tabletop a while back

>>47694883
I would love semi-submersible.
>>47708901
Well shit son, that's exactly the kind of setting I was thinking of over the past few days this thread's been going, or at least the era or so. Going to have to check that out for some ideas. Though i was thinking savage world's as an rpg base, I have enough old books lying around that I could hack together more ship like aerial battleships with staples and glue.

Though I was thinking the not ottomans could have bound djinn strapped into their ships to explain away the physics (as opposed to alchemically enhanced buoyancy and enchantments). The upside is the djinn's handler pretty much serves as the entire crew, the ships are a lot cleaner with a higher operational time, and much more nimble. The downsides being djinn are jackasses being held against their will, and lower weight limits reducing individual armor and armaments.

Looking for thoughts on that last idea.

>>47705091
Thank you!

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>>47706261
>>47707530
No. Pearships.

>>47708648
>>47704640
At this point you've entered the realm of "Yes it will!" "No it won't!" "Yes it WILL!" "No, it WON'T!!!" and nothing constructive will happen until you guys start to provide actual evidence to back up your claims.

tl;dr- fucking citation needed.

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Yep, Last Exile was real airship porn and it atleast attempts to explain why the nations have antigravity units but otherwise use steampunktech.

>>47675813

Two of the best settingbooks for the Forgotten Futures rpg are based around airships and have great lightweight rules for resolving airship combat and related topics.

http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff7/index.htm
http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff1/

>>47708901
>>47708982
Too bad Catalyst/the Chinese killed it.

>>47701089
But none of its problems come from the fact that it flies, they're all issues with the layout

>>47679170
"armed" You fucking bastard.

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I think one of the biggest ramifications from airships is the concept of trade routes

Rivers and oceans man. That's what formed the bulk of humanity. Where there's water-ways, you can ship bulk goods. Where there's trade there's prosperity. Because the the place with the iron ore doesn't have crops and the place with the crops doesn't have iron ore. And humanity is routed by the natural paths of rivers and oceans.


But unless you're catching the wind for propulsion, the sky is all open and free.

The entire map is open and free for any trade in any direction. No roads, no rivers, no path. the only thing that hinders you is the direction of trade winds, mountains, and the need to stop now and then for fuel and piss breaks.

With airships, borders get INCREDIBLY small. Instead of securing a road and a river, you've got an infinite number of paths into your turf.

>>47710733
>stopping for piss breaks
>not just going over the side of the ship

C'mon, don't tell me ye never done it!

>>47710733
i think you forget there are atmosferic currents and yearly phenomena

it wouldm't as like age of sail wher wind was everything but important, you wouldt hit counterwind just because you got engines, right

on tradeships i thing they would be really huge fuckers, not unlike supertankers, or twinhullers

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>>47710824
>it wouldn't be like age of sail

I think it'd be EXACTLY like the transition from the age of sail to steamers. Instead of being limited by trade winds and which way the wind blows, you can now send cargo anywhere you want.


Alternatively, let's say older airships are still limited by the wind. And newer more powerful airships can plow straight through a head-wind.

>>47710812
I've peed off the back of the sail of a submarine.

>>47711054
i get what you mean, but if we go by everything is in high alt, winds probably are much stronger if not nearly a true blue storm most of the time

newers ships might have a chance but nit something anyone would try

>>47711054
Are you aware of jetstreams? You can add 140mph to your top speed if you're in the right place and going the right way, so of course winds and trade routes are important.

>>47708590
>Anti-ship missiles can't penetrate BB belt armor

Why not? Hypersonic penitrators and shaped charges are pretty damn nasty. And that's not even getting into the possibility of nuclear shaped charges.

Regular nuclear weapons can be defeated by heavy armor, but not a nuclear shaped charge.


>>47708648
Super or hypersonic missiles have armored heat resistant nose cones to avoid catching fire and exploding prematurely. Remember they have to travel at sea level and will be subject to extreme atmospheric heating. Even if the laser can target them in time, they won't be doing much to the missile that the missile isn't already doing to itself.

>>47708651
That's why you pulse the beam.
>TFW retro-tech airship discussion devolves into near future naval warfare discussion.

>>47711281
all fads return, mate
military fads too, i guess

>>47711281
>they won't be doing much to the missile that the missile isn't already doing to itself.
And drinking doesn't hurt you more when you're afflicted with the 'alcohol poisoning debuff'.

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>>47677884
>just draw a Catalina but make it look nifty

>>47678054
>former submariner the differences trigger me
>trigger me

Tippity toppest kek I bet you suffer in every submarine movie you watch even more than I do. I love how in Hollywood you can be chased by a mach 3 rocket-powered missile for twenty fucking minutes, but a 60 knot torpedo chasing a 35 knot SSN is on top of its target in thirty seconds or less. HUE.

>>47678025
>tracking 3d movements with a sheet of paper is... not easy or fun

You guys are taking on a very very tough proposition but as someone who fucking loves dogfights/air combat and shit and also RPGs, I really love you for going the extra distance.

>>47679408
>terrible sloping of the armor
>anti-HEAT panels just plastered on willy nilly

e g a d

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>>47711281
The actual historic precedent of guided weapons used against battleships is Frtiz X guided bombs. At the time it was assumed that you needed armor piercing bombs to defeat battleship armor, but in practice, on multiple occasions Frtiz Xs penetrated not only the deck armor of the target, but all of their decks and the bottom of the hull and detonated in the water underneath the ship causing less damage than if they had less penetration. And that was just with a high subsonic impact velocity.

Even with a subsonic weapon an armor piercing warhead is unnecessary to penetrate battleship armor, and even if it was there's nothing preventing a cruise missile from having an armor piercing penetrator in front of its explosive warhead.

>>47711468
I mean it's an anime video game from japan. They weren't exactly the premier tank designers back in WW2... And have always been more style over substance anyway.

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>>47711281
Are you familiar with the tallboy bomb?
Here's the handy work of one, the Tirpitz took several of these before a critical hit was acheived, BBs are built to take it.

>>47708590
Tried that.>>47705323

>>47711799
Bitch bitch bitch, BBs so stonk y no 1 build BBs no more?

Because they cost tens of millions of dollars per ship to build, not counting the cost of supplying, crewing and maintaining them. And while it may take a dozen or so bombs, horribly outdated at this point WW2 bombs that we have surpassed a dozen times over by now with modern shells and missiles and warheads, while it may take a dozen or so Tallboys to destroy a BB.... I can guarantee you that the aircraft that bombed the Tripitz and the bombs themselves cost much, MUCH less than the Tirpitz itself.

Warfare is absolutely about economics, and when a tends of millions of dollars battleship housing over a thousand personnel can be destroyed by a few fighter bombers, especially considering modern munitions, then Battleships get retired. Deal with it. I know it's an unpleasant truth, I know that giant fucking fortresses on the waves with gun turrets the size of houses are FUCKING AWESOME, I know it sucks that aircraft put them out to pasture. But it's the truth and trying desperately to pretend that they're still viable, or that they could be if we just did a little more with something or other, is pointless and simply makes you look like someone who can't accept that times have changed.

>>47712008
I'm well aware, this was the main cause to the change in doctrine.

Warfare is about winning, it's peacetime that's about economics, fighter bombers can be obsolete tomorrow, but they won't because that would cause an arms race.

>>47712051
War is about winning, yes, but it's also about economics. If you have some super tank that's better than every other tank but costs a lot to make and is high maintenance, then you may well lose to someone who is able to field many more of a more economically priced tank. Yes, I'm talking about the big german cats.

And even aside from that, wartime still shows that it's about economics, about what gets things done most efficiently. It's why once carriers were shown to be the new kings due to airpower, the US started building a metric fuckton of them- go look up how many full carriers we built and had plans for during WW2, and then the number of escort carriers. We build/planned for over a hundred escort carriers. All that could have gone towards more armored cruisers and BBs, and to some extent it did, but as air power showed its worth time and time again, at such low cost compared to big ships, they got phased out, even during full open war.