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.

The pirate hull

See also