23.12 Ship Equipment
No self-respecting ship owner will leave his ship without the proper tools and
accessories. What about weapons? How do you make arrangements to buy them? What
are these proper tools and accessories?
What About Weapons?
-------------------
Weapons are in their own category and are covered in HELP SHIP WEAPONS. Payment
will usually be the same as "How to Make Direct Arrangements..." below, though,
so check there too.
How to Make Direct Arrangements
-------------------------------
Find the price and deposit the gold into the GODS account giving a detailed
reason. A detailed reason including what item you are purchasing what ship and
what room you want it placed in.
ie. DEPOSIT 100000 GOLD GODS FOR A BAIT TANK ON THE SHIP BOW OF SHIP24
Once the deposit has been made please message Tecton who will place the item on
your ship as requested within a reasonable amount of time, typical within that
same month.
Purchasing non-decay or ship artefacts should be directed to
artefacts@achaea.com
What are these proper tools and accessories?
--------------------------------------------
The tools and accessories are listed below, including
Bait Tank Beacon of Iocolas Cartographers Desk
Diving Bell Leadline Mariner's Astrolabe
Mariner's Sextant Salvage crane Ship's Axe
Token of Charybdis Ship's Token Stores
Bait Tank (100,000 gold via direct arrangement)
---------
You can have as many or as few of these as you like. Each holds 250 items of
any kind. Bait within will decay at a slower than usual rate. Fish are
unaffected. Everything else decays faster in the bait tank (sloshing
around in all that water isn't good for most things!). Place tanks in any or
all rooms on your ship, as many as you like.
Beacon of Iocolas (50,000 gold via direct arrangement)
-----------------
The perfect accessory for fleets! This piece of equipment will provide much
more detail in SHIP LIST for the ship captain or owner who is not
sufficiently confident about the precise location of his ships. Can only
be used if not already on any ship. The Beacon goes on the bow only.
Cartographer's Desk Standard (25,000 gold via direct arrangement)
Cartographer's Desk Large (75,000 gold; holds double the maps)
----------------------------
Where else would you put your maps? With a cartographer's desk, currently
priced at twenty five thousand gold, those of your crew able to take bearings
(helm or watch of sufficient specialisation) will be able to help you locate
places for which you have maps. Just put your maps into the desk and you're
ready to go. The desk can be in the cabin or on any deck (quarter, main,
side). If you don't specify, it goes on the quarterdeck and may not be
moved.
See HELP SHIP MAPS for somewhat more detail on maps. Blanks are for sale
from Maelstrom.
You may upgrade an existing Standard Desk to a Large one by paying
the difference.
Diving Bell (100,000 gold via direct arrangement)
-----------
Deep sea divers need a way to get down to the sea bed - hence, the diving
bell. Have one or more divers SHIP ENTER BELL, then you can SHIP LOWER
BELL until it arrives at the local sea bed's surface. The bell will make
a ringing noise upon arrival, with the number of rings being an indication
of the likely danger of the area, in terms of local denizens, and the
possibility of treasure as well. If the bell is raised while divers
remain below, those divers must hurry to the bell or be sent to a watery
grave! Divers can SHIP LEAVE BELL at any time at all, no matter where
the bell may be, and be returned to the ship's deck. To explore the
sea bed, divers simply leave to the down whenever that appears. Fish or
other deep sea denizens found on the bottom of the sea may be befriended
or fought or treated in the same way as any other denizen. If fought,
their corpses cannot be sold at fish shops, though. Try offering them!
The bell can only be on the quarterdeck.
Leadline (available from Maelstrom directly)
--------
How can you take a sounding without a leadline? And how can you know if there's
any chance of a good dive without having a sounding? There you go then. The
SHIP TAKE SOUNDING command requires a leadline. If you get a good sounding,
you'll know there's a chance for a good dive. If not, move along. The results
of your sounding have another salutary element - fish will not strike in
shallower waters. So don't try deepsea fishing if you're not in - guess it -
deep sea!
You could just go everywhere and dive, too. I recommend you take soundings.
Mariner's Sextant (35,000 gold via direct arrangement)
-----------------
How better to find your place in the cosmos than with a sextant, which gives a
fairly good idea as to your current position based on your knowledge of the sun
(and maybe someday, stars) and their movements through the skies. Try SHIP TAKE
SIGHTING at noon. These heavy, ship-mounted sextants can be placed in any
location on a ship that is not indoors. The sextant will give latitude only,
to a reasonable level of precision, but not exact. Perhaps some day Achaea's
star charts will be good enough to permit better results.
Salvage Crane (100,000 gold via direct arrangement)
-------------
The crane is needed for those seeking to perform salvage operations. To start
out SHIP SALVAGE SCAN will allow you to locate a sunken ship. Then the crane
will permit you to use SHIP SALVAGE <ship id> in order to pull the wreckage off
the ocean floor.
Ship's Axe (for sale at the Tasur'ke Harbour shop)
----------
Use this axe both to CHOP SECTION FROM DECK (to create a boarding deck,
which allows forceboarding), and to attack boarding decks that may appear
unwelcome on your ship. Special powers are granted these axes for both
purposes.
Token of Charybdis (available from Maelstrom directly)
------------------
Not strictly a piece of equipment FOR a ship, it is nonetheless indispensable
for those ON ships, providing you a way to be rescued from a captainless ship.
Simply SHIP RESCUE ME to invoke the spirit of Charybdis, then wait a while, and
voila! At huge personal cost, you will arrive safely and mostly unharmed at a
mainland harbour.
Ship's Token Stores (available at Tasur'ke and Shala-Khulia harbours)
-------------------
These are sort of bulk equivalents of Tokens of Charybdis which are usable
only by any crew/shipmates/etc (denizen crew), and only when a ship sinks.
They are not quite perfect, but on the whole, very effective. About 80% of
those who use one of the Tokens from the ship's store will be preserved to
continue to serve when the ship is salvaged.
One of the huge advantages to the token stores is that if you do save some
of your crew, you will have a highly-experienced and motivated cadre who
will train up any new crew you hire very quickly. Whatever amount of
experience might be lost by bringing in new crew will be regained in a
very short time.
On the other hand, if you lose your entire crew, then there is no cadre
and thus, your new crewmembers begin as raw recruits, so to speak.
(See also: HELP SHIPS, HELP SHIP WEAPONS)
