[PnP] Ship Project - Installment #14 - Ship/ Cultures

[Scott Adams]

     Installment #14 - Ship and Cultures.

     I meant to release this last week but was sick.  When I worked
  on the Culture Project a couple years ago I worked through line
  by line of each culture.  I made notes and a cultural study enough
  to probably become an antropologist or something :).  Many GMs have
  troulbe starting out fleshing out a good world.  They may use
  their limited world views but stop there.  So a group going on the
  high seas might encounter a ship once a week per the encounter
  charts.  but in reality that's highly unlikely.  More common area
  like shorlines and trade routes you'll encounter ships as common
  as we may cars on a highway.  so this mini project (160k) shipcul.txt
  helps flesh out those fuzzy areas.
     What this project does is details how ships may be distributed
  for a culture.  When I worked on this file over a year ago I had
  a formula.  Unfournately its long gone.  But it was a merge of
  some consenus data, consenus formula, simcity formula and nasa
  data.  That may be odd areas to get a single formula from but the
  consenus folks have managed population formulas for many years.
  Simcity when it first came out in the '80s did real university
  studies on population distributions including traffic and such.  the
  nasa data was the oddest I came across but also helped out.  Together
  I came up with a formula with data points of the culture's population
  and number of ships via culture data.  Using that data I expanded
  it based on the number of miles (or hexes) the territory had.  It
  was a long process to tweak the formula but it worked and is more
  or less 80% scientific based rather than me playing with figures.
  Course that does mean it wasn't perfect.  Some tribes had a ton
  of river rafts they shouldn't have.  So had to play with some figures
  but all in all i'd say the data in the file is 80% science and 20%
  mine.  
     The data includes 71 cultures that should have ships or boats
  around their cultural territory.  Some cultures could not be
  given a full analysis numerically so those cultures were given
  a brief distribution information.  Actually looking at the file
  I see I included all cultures even those without ships to just
  note that fact like Assiran which couldn't have ships.  It must
  be noted unless stated otherwise the data is for normal ship
  sailing months (summer, etc.).  Seasons like winter would affect the
  data and for example could reduce traffic and the numbers by half.
  In some cases I took this into each culture's numbers.
     To take an example let's look at Clima: [a snippet]
              City/Area     Number  Warships   Trireme
         [Clima Island]
              Clima City     500       13        4
              Shimana City   300       13        3
              Melecin City   180       13        3
              Vizan          140       12        3
              Clima Mainland 700       13        3
                     Total  1820       64       16
     This shows the island could have 1,820 ships.  Keep in mind
   ships in many cases is interchangeable with boats.  Unless
   specified for the culture.  So this huge amount could be from
   the small personal rowboat to fishing boats.  When you consider
   the size of clima and its population almost 2,000 ships isn't
   that a great deal when you look at ancient Italy or Greece in
   the same techno era which had anywhere from 3-5,000.  I then
   broke down the warships and show where each may be based out of.
      the aspect of showing where warships might be based out of
   gives a "patrol" area as well for encounters.  in some cased
   i even generate encounter tables.  For ptrol zones like Teo which
   covers a big area of ocean it could be 14 square hexes that
   they consider their sphere of influence.  So the data can be used
   to further develop encounter tables.
      At the bottom of the file is the master break down chart.
   I made this chart for many reasons including in my hope the
   big construction document (which I've not had time to continue
   work on).  This will help me in a few ways to determine ship
   production analysis based on timber and such.  Here is a
   snippet of the chart:

   *  Culture Fleet Chart

                                                                   
                      Civilian      Military                 Land  Timber 
    Culture         River   Sea   River   Sea  Tri  Pirates  Lock  Resources
The A'ha'Kacili       50     -       2      -    -   Rare     Y    Rare
A'Korchu               -    600      -    140   50   Some     N    Good
Aratad Confederacy    20    600      -    100   30   Some     N    Minor


  Table Explanations:

  River     - Craft found in any river hex or river basin hex
  Sea       - Craft found in any coastal or open ocean hex
  Tri       - Trireme number, this is the number included in warship figure
  Pirates   - Amount of pirate presence in this culture
  land      - Yes or No if this culture is land locked [No Ocean access]
  Resources - Level of timber resources for ship construction

  Timber/Land Resources
      Level        Description of Resources
      Rare         Light woods, very few if any resources
      Poor         Small woods, enough for limited number of light craft
      Minor        Moderate woods, enough for sizable number of small craft
      Good         Light forest
      Excellent    Heavy forest

   ------------------------------------------------------

   The Pirate aspectI may develop into a more defined system but the
   system i got can determine the presence of pirates in that area.
   The timber will help to determine supply lines in time of war
   and ship construction.

      I hope you enjoy the file.  If your email strips tabs the columns
  will suck.  So you'll have to wait till its on the website when I
  send it to wout.  This was a fun file to do though math intensive :)

                           ---------------------
        
    This is the last installment till I get off my rear end and work
  on the construction and war parts (the big annoyine parts).  Then
  the project is over.  There is one file i got from Richard on
  Notable personalities he did up but its a *.rtf file.  So can't
  email it.  Its huge 547k.  but will send it to wout when I'm done.

  Enjoy!
  
  Happy Thanksgiving!

I printed this file in the initial stages a long time ago but not the complete file.

On a side note: Adventure #3 in my PBEM is starting.  Open enrollment is always welcome...

Doesn't include Eastern lands as that came out after i did this..maybe one day I'll append that area...