[PnP] Progress

[Choinski, Burton]

Wasn't upset.  Just frustrating since theres no one good source out there
for all this stuff.  Takes 30-40 sites to find that one key piece of data :)
I looked all last night well 6 hours on sites for timber prices, medieval
ship prices, building costs, wood costs, ancient ship prices/costs all
various keyword searches.  Nada.  I did find 1 site that gave some
interesting facts which I have also confirmed locally when a ship (the old
16th century ones) came to port and I asked questions.  In this case to do
...ugh should've noted this...the HMS Venture was 687K pounds.  In today's
figures per the economic history site would be about 28.3 million :)  So
making a ship is not cheap as the various other rules in gamedom seem to
imply.  


I agree on the data gathering part.  During our various discussions here I
have tried to find things like time to create a bow or armor in medieval
times and price info myself.  The problem is not everything we need has been
converted from dead-tree sources. :P

So, in a lot of my sources I have also looked at other games to see what
they have done, hoping that THEY have done some sort of research with
offline sources, then reinterpret their rules with what I can find online
and rework those into our frameworks.

HARN is an example of this. Their prices seem at least somewhat reasonable
(their ship costs are somewhat formulaic, but produce a high (and not
extreme) cost.  I mean, look at the number you gave before - 29k GOLD - that
is basically 30 GNI.  Are you saying that if the Korchi threw EVERYTHING
they had at it they could build about 14 of these ships per year?
Presumably GNI would go toward maintenance of existing fleets and armies, so
it would have to be fewer then that.

Nearly 30 thousand gold seems a bit high to me...


If we just make timber cheap or free we really get the bulk of the cost out
of the equation.  Hull structure by all accounts of naval historysites is at
least 60-70% of the ship's cost in olden times.  That's expert opinions not
mine :<  Course they don't go into greatt detail on those costs.  Based on
modern times ...oh darn! darn darn darn!  I should have applied that 93
cents to ancient terms but when?  Hrm...good idea to get a 500-600 year rate
back then ....maybe apply it to 11th century rates....I'll have to think
about that.   

Its all subjective.  1 BB is way too cheap for a piece of wood.  I mean you
call any hardware store (and I've visited some recently) and compare prices
of the modern same its a bit more.  Course it boils down to the conersion
rates.



Expenses are most likely a power factor over materials.  The raw materials
themselves are fairly cheap (otherwise a peasent could keep himself fed by
trading in 3 1'x1' planks each day).  So you have the cheap labor cost to
produce/gather the raw materials.  Add another cost for cheap labor to
transport it to the drydock area.  Then comes the expensive labor to put it
together so it won't sink on you.  Layer another MORE expensive labor cost
for each level of "finish" to the boat (your basic boat being "good").  A
"Fine" ship requires artisans and engineers to turn the basic utilitarian
structures to a more attractive or desirable (or tougher) boat.  Superior
boats require artisans put in the gold leaf on the figurehead, and all the
fluff.

So basically, materials are cheap, because you pay Joe Peon crap wages to
cut or haul it.  When it comes to making use of the materials you need the
engineers, artisans and craftsmen, and their labor isn't cheap.

While we might be able to determine how long it takes to turn a 1000BF oak
tree into usable lumber by how many men (and thus pro-rate the cost based on
daily wage per man to determine the "cost" per board foot), the harder
research is how long it takes to put-together a ship that requires 100,000
board feet of wood, as well as for larger or smaller ships.  With luck we
can find such data, make a few data points and perhaps make a formula that
will work as a rule of thumb (like they use for HARN).

 

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