View source for Vessels of Teraell

; Large warships
: Heavy rifled cannon, large crews, and supply for extended operations. Coral filtration for long voyages, clockwork hull monitoring, precision chronometers, clockwork-assisted gun aiming, and mechanical damage-control pumps. The most powerful individual vessels in the world. [[Shining Reach]] and [[Eldershore]] operate most of them.
; Medium warships
: The most common naval vessel — fast enough to pursue, armed enough to fight, and practical for patrol. [[Forgegate]] favors them heavily.
; Small fast vessels
: For pursuit and scouting, speed prioritized over guns. Clockwork rigging optimization makes them particularly quick.
; Armed merchant vessels
: Not warships, but with enough rifled cannon and trained crew to defend themselves. This is Forgegate's whole approach to naval power: every merchant hull is partly a warship, which makes the fleet far larger than its dedicated vessels suggest.

== The pirate hull ==
Built on a different philosophy, for different needs. Weight is minimized: fewer, lighter guns; shot and powder for one engagement rather than a campaign; smaller crews; no extended supply, since they work close to home; lighter hulls. A pirate vessel weighs half what an equivalent warship does, with the same sail area and clockwork optimization, which gives it a real speed advantage — not steam fast, but meaningfully faster than the heavy ship trying to catch it.

Its weapons are for close range. Carronades — short-barreled, large-caliber, devastating at boarding distance and useless at any other, and an enormous saving in weight over long guns. Swivel guns on rails to clear a deck during the approach. Incendiary shot and firebombs, because fire is a warship's greatest fear and panic during the approach is worth more than damage. Rigging is the priority investment: a top captain puts money into full clockwork sail control before anything else, because closing the distance faster than the defender can destroy you is the entire tactical problem.

== See also ==

* [[Naval Warfare]] · [[Piracy]] · [[Halvek]] — what a keel is cut from · [[Blaenda]] — what keeps the ironwork sound · [[Moving Goods]]