Oltux72

Where is the advantage? Switching the engine on is hard. The speeds need to be matched. That is a nightmare if you have no idea what is happening on the ground.

Only until you hover.

Windrunners would have to lash ship, passengers and cargo. All of whom would be in free fall when they are lashed. If you are a Radiant I am sure Stormlight will keep your lunch down. For normal people the consequences will be worse.. In addition an air barge is virtually immune against counter lashings. or rammings. It is potentially absolutely stable a platform for fighting.

I may have to correct myself. The 5 knots is probably average speed. How exactly the speed curve looks like depends on whether you indeed need to stop for the chulls to turn. Yet your main resistance is probably rolling resistance. Looking at Fourth Bridge only as the flying component is a mistake. The next obvious step would be to place the ground part on rails. Then you could run it like a cable car on a loop. In fact 5 knots is quite fast. I suspect that they are already using rails.

Much closer: Oppenheimer

For all we know all Radiants may be able to operate on Voidlight. It may have different performance characteristics or side effects, but we can't rule out that it would basically work.

Not really. It may be arbitrary unless you are subject to an external force or inside a gravity well. And then both of you must align according to that force or gravity. Certainly, but the assumption that that is the breakthrough that aluminium allowed is a bit strange. No, it would not be irrelevant. The exact wording is alter, not redirect. For example it could allow you to move your ship around horizontally while the anchor in Urithiru remains stationary and the connection switched on. That is correct, but built on the assumption that gravity does not matter. This is the core so let me quote it literally: What does alternate mean? Do they really switch them off or do they move them only one at a time? And what does soar mean? Being aloft or being raised? I am afraid at this time these are real differences not just details of wording. It must be possible to have both connections on, at least briefly. You need to be at rest. If the chull platform needs to bear the ship's weight, the ship cannot be falling. You cannot signal both ground stations at once, except at a dead stop. The spanreed must be at rest. By extrapolating from Navani's old platform. Well, no. Let me quote again That is impossible under the old scheme. During that time the ship must be held aloft by the Urithiru base support. But that is not moving. The airship could not be continuing. It would have to hover. And that is not a question of orientation. That is solvable. The problem is that they switch the connection to the chull platform off during the turn. Well, no. Not unless you are at a complete stop while the chulls turn. Well, no. The isolation along a plane and the change of vectors comes first. Disjoining comes later. There is no indication it is done with aluminium. Well, that is difficult. You can certainly switch on your spanreed, yet it does not join because it is improperly aligned or not at rest to its counterpart. It looks like there is no way to actively disjoin it without switching it off (or using aluminium) but the reverse is not true Great notion, but potentially we are looking at three states not two. off on but not joined (due to either speed or aluminium) joined If you assume that the connection to Urithiru is switched off As long as the connection is joined in all axes. Which according to the weirder part about aluminium it is not. And that is deeply problematic. The ship is basically tethered while the chulls are being turned. There is no way around that, as the connection to the chulls is off. It will now start twisting as the wind is buffeting it. And that is deeply problematic, as the chull cart is not. How do they reestablish the connection? It seems to me that the answer again is aluminium. That is insanely fast if that object massing - let's guess - a hundred tons is magically tied to a cart going towards a chasm Indeed. And chulls are not known for fastness. Hence we must conclude that the Fourth Bridge does not stop while the chulls are turning. It coasts and that is possible only because the Urithiru anchor is always connected and the ship is coasting along a plane while the chulls are being turned thanks to aluminium.

No, there is also the presumably Elantrian technology Riino was using in Oathbringer.

Well, as I said, mixing these options is possible. And it is possible that they depend on the attitude of the maker/user I am afraid not. If you need to align the fabrials correctly then as spanreeds are usable, Rosharans must be quite easily able to determine the correct alignment. Not really. You just switch over to the reverser fabrials in whatever way you switch the fabrials off. Such a switch must exist or they could not disjoint them sensibly whenever they turn. In fact such an arrangement allows you to put the fabrial on rails. Or indeed to use two sets of fabrials.

Well, you have to make up your mind. Why would the direction spanreeds orient themselves relative to be the rotational axis of the planet. For all we know they work with respect towards the next perpendicularity or the center of Roshar's map in Shadesmar. Gravity is a physical effect. Oh and are we sure Roshar has a normal magnetic field? I do not rememer anybody using a compass. Not really. Using two thills you can rest your chulls periodically. And you need to switch off during the turn anyway if you want to let the airship coast.

How sure are we that Amaram was and is a true believer? Evil Overlord List: #10: I will not interrogate my enemies in the inner sanctum — a small hotel well outside my borders will work just as well.

That depends on how cojoined fabrials work. Apparently they need to be at rest with respect to each other to transmit force. In other words, she is as fast as her chulls can be made to walk. Indeed horses would work better.

Upon further thought I think that both fabrials are in aluminium tubes, so that sidewards drift of the ship is not transmitted to the chulls. I am afraid this will need more complexity. We have to face that to a cojoined fabrial up and down are special. That the spanreeds need to be leveled is impossible to explain away. I am afraid there is a hybrid system and the difference in orientation of the spanreeds will show in a tiny bit of "coriolis" force but it really does not matter in practice. External and the orientation of the cut are competing. If Roshar were a quickly rotating neutron star you probably would have to align your spanreed due north and south. Secondly this discussion hinges a lot on the exact meaning of "turn around". Are they physically rotating the fabrial or does it have thills in front and back and they are just hitching chulls to the other end and switch to the reversers?

In water, which is orders of magnitude denser and more viscose.

This is all plausible, but explains only a part of the issue. You need to explain why a brandnew type of Fused appeared within hours of Kaladin at the very day the Mink came into town. Just knowing who Kaladin is, whence he stems and how he looks is the smaller part of the problem.

Ialai wants to lead. As far as Torol Sadeas knew about Gavilar's project, I suspect Ialai to share his knowledge. But on the whole I suspect Shallan to be barking up the wrong tree. They are suspecting that they have a leak, but instead of suspecting Taravangian, they are looking at Ialai.

I guess the KRs are suspecting a traitor in their midst but are looking in the wrong circles.

Azure had tested that in Oathbringer. Where we needed to speculate is in what happens if you partially enclose them in aluminium. Navani has now answered that. You change vectors. How exactly this works is still an open question. The most straightforward answer I can come up with is a directional diminishing of the vector, resulting in a vector changed in direction, albeit weaker after that.

The short version - he did not think about aircraft carriers Those airships have a performance characteristic that limits them. They have limited range and their performance drops with range. That means that airships closer to "base" and engine will always be at an advantage. Thus you can give yourself an advantage if you move your base closer to your area of operation. The very first thing Thaylen naval engineers will come up with when they think this through is the airship carrier. It won't be exactly like an aircraft carrier, in particular it won't have many small aircraft for one big ship, but few large aircraft, but it is at the core the basic concept. Steampunk Roshar will be interesting.

Right. But then you can use a mill to power a chain or belt system. Put the fabrials onto the links of a chain. Span it horizontally as a loop. At the ends of the loop switch between joiners and reversers. Use chulls to move a rotary pole and use cogs to convert between vertical and horizontal movement. In fact you can keep it vertical if you can keep the chain fairly straight. Then don't make the whole structure out of metal. Use metal for a frame work.

Gavilar was pretty insulting. Now it would be easy to say that he just used her impostor syndrome against her. But that would be wrong. Gavilar was clever. He had a hint of truth there. Navani is not an especially good artefabrian. Gavilar was correct but at the same time he did not understand what he was seeing. Leadership in Alethkar is kind of primitive. You are the best at a certain task, hence you lead and instruct other people doing the same task. That is not what Navani is. She is specialised in leadership. In other words, Navani is Alethkar's first engineering project manager. That was beyond Gavilar, essentially a politician and soldier. But the question is, does she understand her own function or does she merely see herself as an aristocratic oddity?

The Radiants are there. That the airship is still there is not so clear. I see two possibilities. The Radiants assume that the enemy does not know of the airship. Hence the airship is running while Radiants form a screen behind it to stall and if possible defeat the Fused The Fused are too quick. In that case I think the airship will actually land in the village. There is no point in having a lashable target aloft if your mobility is compromised. And the Radiants are better in urban combat than the Fused. Their spren work to their advantage.

At 5 knots? They have aluminium. And maybe duraluminium. Use a gimbaled steam engine. Put a joiner and a reverser into the piston. On the upstroke activate the joiner and on the downstroke the reverser.

It would enable the movement, but the airship would suck. It would essentially be the platform already used for archery. Something needs to hold up the airship while you switch chulls. And you cannot just switch on the reverser and switch off the joiner, as an airship moving along without power actually does experience forces from wind resistance. The reverser at Urithiru would undergo lateral movements. You'd have to actually mostly stop the airship to switch chulls and each movement would be a very awkward switching exercise. An error would lead to an undesirable interaction with solid ground. It seems to me that the key is the change of vectors with aluminium she mentioned. I suppose the reverser in Urithiru is inside a long, openended cylinder of aluminium with its long axis oriented vertically. And that shroud shields it laterally. Thus you leave it on permanently and just switch off the joiner while reversing and all is well, letting the airship coast but still held up by the reverser. You could even have the top and the bottom of the framework holding the joiner made of aluminium, so that you can go up and down with your airship without your chulls becoming airborne. And unless you have a death wish you have a third set actually mortared into the solid ground which you can switch to for station keeping in bad weather or an emergemcy.

That is the problem. It would have to be both. Hence: a Regal - Smokeform? Secondly why break down the body? It is additional work. It does not. You cannot go into Shadesmar with that power. Yet you can heal yourself with a transport and you can be an unassailable observer. Or the other way round. Kaladin is making an assumption that will turn out to be false.