Updating Navani's work

[Quantus]

On the whole Wood vs Metal for it's construction, dont forget that they have their super Bridge-Balsa Plot-wood that is both ube-strong and uber-light (Naturally occurring carbon fiber, would be my guess).  There may not actually be many metals (especially common metals and not specialized alloys) that would compete with Plot-Wood.  

As far as Improvements to The Forth Bridge, Defensive and offensive capabilities are the obvious next step, along with real cabins that might let them weather a storm on-board (landed of course).  But those are almost more logistics than technology.  For the airship itself I think the main place for improvement is the drive system.  Since their lift and propulsion are separate systems, that leaves a lot of flexibility.  The current chull-drive process is really inefficient because roughly half of the time is spent resetting the chulls and gems while the barge sits idle.  A second set of drive gems that are reversed would double their overall speed simply, because they could be moving the barge forward on both sides of the chull cycle.  

The Chull Drive has the benefit of not actually requiring any radiant to operate, which are a far more limited resource.  But when they do have them in the strength we saw, Windrunner gravitation for the horizontal drive should be pretty easy.  They wouldnt actually want too many lashings on top of each other, anything more than like 2-3 G's would start slinging people off, but with Dalinar fueling that many Windrunners I bet they could each put a 0.05 Lashing on the thing and add up to a proper falling speed.  

 

On 7/30/2020 at 4:49 AM, rjl said:

Having to keep communicating with Urithiru seems awkward - building on ftl's ideas above could they have the engine onboard?

If all you need is gems being moved with great power over tiny distances - round oval shaped courses with aluminium blocking the wrong angles etc - do it with conveyor belts powered by a steam engine, scale it down and put it inside the ship - though you will need need a source of water for the steam - could maybe soul cast it.

I dont think so, you cant have it on-board for the same reason you cant pull on your shoelaces and levitate.  One of the two ends needs to be anchored to ground so the system as a whole has something to "push off" against.  

 

2 hours ago, hoiditthroughthegrapevine said:

Here's an idea for troop immobilization, say you have a dangerous prisoner, like for instance, the man previously known as Moash, and you want him to be unable to move from a specific spot. Use this little beauty, a locking shackle conjoined to a 2 ton block of soulcast granite. Or why not just conjoin the shackle with the base of Urithiru.

Ah, D&D's classic immovable rod, I love it.  My favorite application was to put one in a spear-head and use it to stop a charging horse.  

[Aminar]

I'm not sure Aerodynamics would increase the speed much. They'd reduce drag and make the work easier on the Chulls, but however fast they're moving it's going to be roughly a proportion of the speed the Chulls are walking. 5 knots is just under 6 MPH(5.754) which is probably double a Chull's walking speed or so from the way they're described. At that speed air drag is largely unimportant. It's not unimportant. Just, not really a factor in speed so much as effort. The real factor here is, can you mechanize the movement to take advantage of pullys and levers and wheels for way more speed. Then aerodynamics might matter. But so long as its just linear chull motion with a multiplier of some kind, it's not going to be all that fast. 

[Karger]

4 hours ago, hoiditthroughthegrapevine said:

Here's an idea for troop immobilization, say you have a dangerous prisoner, like for instance, the man previously known as Moash, and you want him to be unable to move from a specific spot. Use this little beauty, a locking shackle conjoined to a 2 ton block of soulcast granite. Or why not just conjoin the shackle with the base of Urithiru.

He could just break the maniacal.  I am not sure that is more secure then just chaining him to a wall.  Also what if you manages to drain or damage the gemstone?