The Airship is a light method of air travel, representing a cruder, earlier form of flight than the Elytra- the Furnace Minecart to its Powered Rails, if you will. It resembles a boat with a stubby two-bladed wooden propeller on the rear, hung by four ropes under a larger cubical balloon. A single gold-rimmed gauge (similar to a Clock, but with a white interior and a red arm) is placed at the front of the gondola's inside.
Crafting Recipe
To craft an Airship, you need a Minecart with Furnace (center of table), a Boat (bottom center), two String (bottom left and right), and five Banners filling the rest of the table. This gives you an airship sans any fuel. The airship will have the textures of the Banners as well as their color, on the corresponding sides of the envelope to the positions of the Banners on the Crafting Table.
Behavior
Placing an Airship lets you get inside of it. This won't do anything immediately, though; you'll have to apply Coal on it with right-click in the same way as a Furnace Minecart. Holding coal or charcoal will prevent you from entering, as it will simply fuel the vessel instead. Once this happens the Airship will start emitting smoke from its propeller. A single piece of Coal powers the Airship for only a minute, or 1/3 of the time it would a Furnace Minecart- any other fuels usable by a Furnace Minecart or Furnace can be used in an Airship, at around 3x the consumption rate. Once its fuel is spent it will become less responsive to control and start to steadily descend, as well as no longer emit any smoke particles. The current amount of fuel can be determined by the gauge inside the gondola, which will gradually turn from pointing right to pointing left as it empties of fuel. The airship produces clanking, hissing, and wheezing sounds from its steam engine as it moves.
The vehicle is handled with your movement keys, space bar (for ascending) and CTRL key (for descending). It moves at around the speed of a furnace minecart and can rise and fall at your command, though it has an altitude limit of Y=100 (making it incapable of rising over 38 blocks from the average ground level, or ascending over the highest mountains at Y=126). Using a firework rocket while sitting in an Airship will result in it rapidly rising, possibly to its maximum height- a useful emergency ascent tool if necessary. You can fit yourself and a mob into it; loading a mob into the rear will weigh down the vessel a bit, making it slightly more sluggish in speed and control.
This keeps it from becoming an easy way to avoid monsters or other players in multiplayer, while still being useful for movement, particularly when the ground is uneven. The longer range of vision you can get at higher levels is also good for scouting purposes. Additionally, the steady platform of the airship and its ability to hover at a certain height makes it ideal as a sniping platform or a utility during large building projects. This is assisted by its ability to ignore projectiles fired by the player riding inside it for a few blocks around; as a result arrows you shoot (but not those of enemies) will simply pass through the bottom if you're shooting downwards, for instance.
The Airship has just 8 hearts of health, and four points of natural "armor". It can be destroyed with left-click in the same way as a regular Minecart (shaking a bit until you destroy it, then dropping as an item) but will simply drop a Furnace, some wood, and sticks if destroyed otherwise. When "killed" it will produce heavy smoke and the balloon will emit flame particles; it will rapidly fall to the ground, and explode three or so seconds after landing in a small radius. It will outright explode and dump its occupant out in flight if hit with a fireball, such as that from a Ghast, or otherwise set on fire. Damaged Airships will produce gradually more smoke and can be repaired with Wool Blocks (as most damage goes to the balloon), with more Wool Blocks providing a gradually greater repair.
So that's basically it. Feel free to leave your thoughts on it.
What does "reasonably quickly" mean? When making a suggestion, you need to avoid or better define vague terms like this; it's okay if you aren't really sure where to put the numbers (even analogies to similar things will work, like "50% faster than furnace minecarts"), we can hash that out in the resulting discussions as different points are brought up.
You should also provide some options for things like fuel. We have the coal item, sure, but we can compress 9 of those into a coal block so would a coal block result in 9 times the duration? What about blaze rods or lava buckets (they're a furnace fuel, though the much older furnace minecarts aren't yet updated to use anything but coal items)?
It's not part of the original suggestion, but what would happen if the player let loose an elytra rocket while in the airship? Would it just shoot upwards like fireworks normally do or would it act as a booster like with elytra? This sort of peripheral scenario will be brought up by the average player who is already exposed to similar mechanics (ie, elytra) so it's probably a good idea to consider such things--even if it's only going to be a silly easter egg.
Another thing might be to figure out a problem with a similar mechanic that your suggestion is intended to fix or mitigate. This airship, at the cost of being relatively slow, could give you more control than an elytra during flight, making it a better mode for doing sky-high builds or sniping targets or whatever.
What does "reasonably quickly" mean? Around minecart speed, I guess. When making a suggestion, you need to avoid or better define vague terms like this; it's okay if you aren't really sure where to put the numbers (even analogies to similar things will work, like "50% faster than furnace minecarts"), we can hash that out in the resulting discussions as different points are brought up. Good point.
You should also provide some options for things like fuel. We have the coal item, sure, but we can compress 9 of those into a coal block so would a coal block result in 9 times the duration? What about blaze rods or lava buckets (they're a furnace fuel, though the much older furnace minecarts aren't yet updated to use anything but coal items)? I reckon that anything that can power a furnace minecart- or a furnace in general- would power an airship. Airships consume fuel at 3x the rate of a furnace minecart, so they'd do the same for furnace fuels as a ballpark estimate.
It's not part of the original suggestion, but what would happen if the player let loose an elytra rocket while in the airship? Would it just shoot upwards like fireworks normally do or would it act as a booster like with elytra? Hell, that's a good idea. An "emergency ascent" tool of sorts. This sort of peripheral scenario will be brought up by the average player who is already exposed to similar mechanics (ie, elytra) so it's probably a good idea to consider such things--even if it's only going to be a silly easter egg.
Another thing might be to figure out a problem with a similar mechanic that your suggestion is intended to fix or mitigate. This airship, at the cost of being relatively slow, could give you more control than an elytra during flight, making it a better mode for doing sky-high builds or sniping targets or whatever. Yeah- those were some things I was thinking of while writing this. I think I'll add those into the OP.
I highly appreciate the feedback- it's things like these that I tend to forget when releasing the initial versions of suggestions. Responses are bold.
like this idea :>: ; as much because it doesn't present a 'fix' to a game challenge as becasue of … just cool.
Running through a lot of "Gee, I wonder if it could be used to…" scenarios and hitting some questions/ideas…
Crafting:
Does the gondola retain the wood type of the boat? (I'd suggest yes, although that would make it more demanding to implement.)
RE recipe: this seems quite cheap for what it does. I suggest 5 matching banners instead of 5 wool blocks. This would increase the cost by ~6x, but would have the offsetting benefit that the envelope would show the banner pattern on each side & the top. (More lag inducing perhaps, but I don't envision anyone using more than a very few of these at one time and it would look spiffy.)
If you prefer to keep the current recipe, I'd suggest having fabrication/dyeing rules as current for beds. [Wool blocks must match, resulting bed is that color; White beds can be dyed.]
If you find yourself looking for ways to give this item compensating disablities, something you might consider is having the airship revert to its components when "broken" by the player for pickup as furnace minecarts currently do? This would make the item considerably more expensive (in terms of inventory slots) to transport as well as better mirror furnace minecart behavior..
The effect of having the airship destroyed at altitude seems overly harsh, perhaps the failing 'ship might somewhat slow & attenuate fall damage?
If airships are intended as a mid- to late-game feature, this point becomes less important as feather fall & protection armors become common.
Does the airship have durability? If so how much so? (Based on boats, furnaces, and mincarts giving it duability would seem odd, IMO.)
Can an airship be repaired? If so, how so? Suggest by consuming a banner that must be of the same pattern / only the same base color using either an anvil (with / without prior work penalties) or a crafting table. Same pattern, on an anvil, with prior work penalties would make repair much more expensive than any banner (or even just any wool) on a crafting table; I've tried to indicate a range of available options so you can tailor the repair cost to the role you see the item playing. [I'm also assuming it makes sense to have the repair concentrate on damage to the envelope. This seems reasonable given that the effect of being shot out of the sky is that you get the furnace back, the boat is reduced to components, and and the wool envelope vanishes.]
Does the boat keep its player plus one mob seating? Or does the furnace "occupy" the second slot? (The former option would open many more possibilities… )
"I reckon that anything that can power a furnace minecart- or a furnace in general- would power an airship" This would make sense, but furnace minecarts are currently able to use coal & charcoal (not blocks of coal). Suggest retaining this until/if furnace minecarts are updated; this would allow airships to use the furnace minecart fueling code with only a simple change in consumption rate.Depending on how this was coded it could provide an automatic update when furnace minecarts fuel requirements are updated.
Is there some warning of low fuel? [One can check the fuel remaining in a regular furnace, but not one in a minecart.]
"…the steady platform of the airship and its ability to hover at a certain height makes it ideal as a sniping platform or a utility during large building projects."
This sounds like one has more maneuverability in the gondala than one does in a boat. If shooting and block placing range and arc differ from that of a boat, how so?
"This is assisted by its ability to ignore projectiles fired by the player riding inside it for a few blocks around; as a result arrows you shoot (but not those of enemies) will simply pass through the bottom if you're shooting downwards, for instance."
This is one of the few parts I dislike. If I am properly understanding your intent, this sounds like the gondola can function as sheild against fire from the ground while not interfering with fire from inside it – which strikes me as a bit overpowered.... Perhaps a percentage penalty to ground fire would be less so....
How does this effect work when firing between two airships? Although it sounds like targeting ones opponent's envelope might well be the better strategy.
Can any enchantmets affect airships?
Suggest:
FeatherFall — decreases fall damage if the 'ship is 'destoyed'
Protection and its variants
How do Flame and/or Fire Aspect interact with airships?
How do Endermen interact? [Furnaces appear to be a valid block for their teleport ability, but they are listed as not teleporting out of minecarts/boats.]
Do these work in the Nether? in the End?
If usable in the Nether, how to Ghasts and Blazes interact with airships? [While I can see just making Nether operation prohibitively dangerous, the idea that riding an airship provides an immunity to being targeted by ghasts similar to what wearing a pumpkin provides with respect to endermen also seems interesting…]
Irrelevant curiousity:
Why a three bladed propeller? A boat has two oars and minecraft generally has a very orthogonal look… Either two or four might also be easier to animate…
Plans to animate the propeller?
Overall I like this proposal; some details to be worked out, but generally,
SUPPORT
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Why does everything have to be so stoopid?" Harvey Pekar (from American Splendor)
WARNING: I have an extemely "grindy" playstyle; YMMV — if this doesn't seem fun to you, mine what you can from it & bin the rest.
like this idea :>: ; as much because it doesn't present a 'fix' to a game challenge as becasue of … just cool.
Running through a lot of "Gee, I wonder if it could be used to…" scenarios and hitting some questions/ideas…
Crafting:
Does the gondola retain the wood type of the boat? (I'd suggest yes, although that would make it more demanding to implement.) Nah; for the sake of simplicity it's always oak.
RE recipe: this seems quite cheap for what it does. I suggest 5 matching banners instead of 5 wool blocks. This would increase the cost by ~6x, but would have the offsetting benefit that the envelope would show the banner pattern on each side & the top. (More lag inducing perhaps, but I don't envision anyone using more than a very few of these at one time and it would look spiffy.) Hey, there's a good idea.
If you prefer to keep the current recipe, I'd suggest having fabrication/dyeing rules as current for beds. [Wool blocks must match, resulting bed is that color; White beds can be dyed.]
If you find yourself looking for ways to give this item compensating disablities, something you might consider is having the airship revert to its components when "broken" by the player for pickup as furnace minecarts currently do? This would make the item considerably more expensive (in terms of inventory slots) to transport as well as better mirror furnace minecart behavior.. Perhaps, but then again it'd be easy to carry unplaced as well. I think running off the same destruction system as the boat is best.
The effect of having the airship destroyed at altitude seems overly harsh, perhaps the failing 'ship might somewhat slow & attenuate fall damage? Airships could just catch on fire and slowly fall toward the ground; perhaps then the player could jump out and run before it touches the ground and explodes a few seconds later.
If airships are intended as a mid- to late-game feature, this point becomes less important as feather fall & protection armors become common.
Does the airship have durability? If so how much so? No, not in the "use" sense, though it has some "health" (basically a few arrows to destroy it) when hit by ranged fire. A little stronger than a minecart but not by all that much. (Based on boats, furnaces, and mincarts giving it duability would seem odd, IMO.)
Can an airship be repaired? If so, how so? Suggest by consuming a banner that must be of the same pattern / only the same base color using either an anvil (with / without prior work penalties) or a crafting table. Same pattern, on an anvil, with prior work penalties would make repair much more expensive than any banner (or even just any wool) on a crafting table; I've tried to indicate a range of available options so you can tailor the repair cost to the role you see the item playing. [I'm also assuming it makes sense to have the repair concentrate on damage to the envelope. This seems reasonable given that the effect of being shot out of the sky is that you get the furnace back, the boat is reduced to components, and and the wool envelope vanishes.] Good ideas. I think I'll add those.
Does the boat keep its player plus one mob seating? Or does the furnace "occupy" the second slot? (The former option would open many more possibilities… ) Oh, yeah! I didn't even remember that boats can fit a mob as well now. I reckon that since the furnace is "converted" into a steam engine of sorts, it would be a little out of the way; hence you could indeed fit a Villager or something in, barely. It would slightly slow down maneuvering and speed but you could indeed carry a mob with the Airship.
"I reckon that anything that can power a furnace minecart- or a furnace in general- would power an airship" This would make sense, but furnace minecarts are currently able to use coal & charcoal (not blocks of coal). Suggest retaining this until/if furnace minecarts are updated; this would allow airships to use the furnace minecart fueling code with only a simple change in consumption rate.Depending on how this was coded it could provide an automatic update when furnace minecarts fuel requirements are updated.
Is there some warning of low fuel? [One can check the fuel remaining in a regular furnace, but not one in a minecart.] No; but I can think of something like a hissing sound or even some sort of gauge inside of the airship in first person.
"…the steady platform of the airship and its ability to hover at a certain height makes it ideal as a sniping platform or a utility during large building projects."
This sounds like one has more maneuverability in the gondala than one does in a boat. If shooting and block placing range and arc differ from that of a boat, how so? Well, it's not really any more maneuverable or so, but you can fly with it and if you don't make it rise or fall it'll hold its position until it's out of fuel. That offers you higher height (good for sniping) and the ability to carefully work on something on a big survival building project without having to make dirt scaffolds or a waterfall.
"This is assisted by its ability to ignore projectiles fired by the player riding inside it for a few blocks around; as a result arrows you shoot (but not those of enemies) will simply pass through the bottom if you're shooting downwards, for instance."
This is one of the few parts I dislike. If I am properly understanding your intent, this sounds like the gondola can function as sheild against fire from the ground while not interfering with fire from inside it – which strikes me as a bit overpowered.... Perhaps a percentage penalty to ground fire would be less so.... This only really works at the bottom. It's meant to prevent arrows from clipping into the gondola and destroying it, similar to how you can hit yourself with your own arrows when fired with an Elytra. It only works with your OWN projectiles, not anyone else or a mob's, and the 10 HP + 4 armor of an airship doesn't make it especially resistant against three or four arrows.
How does this effect work when firing between two airships? Although it sounds like targeting ones opponent's envelope might well be the better strategy. Simple; your shots affect them but not you, and their shots affect you but not them. So you can indeed have an air to air engagement if you wish. Targeting the envelope doesn't really do anything special, but I think a burning arrow or fire charge or whatever could make it explode. Airships are meant for transport, scouting, and limited skirmishing; fire is a mortal weakness of the machine.
Can any enchantmets affect airships? I wouldn't imagine it- since they're vehicles. Enchantments might be fun but the idea of the airship having that enchantment glimmer all the time seems annoying and enchantments might be a little overpowered. I do think some system involving working at the Airship with various addons of iron ingots, redstone, etc. might do things like enhance its engine power or toughness.
Suggest:
FeatherFall — decreases fall damage if the 'ship is 'destoyed'
Protection and its variants
How do Flame and/or Fire Aspect interact with airships? *BOOM*
How do Endermen interact? They will not really be able to attack without glitching; I think they'll just menacingly stare at you and telepor to keep up, waiting for when you will touch the ground. They can get into an airship but probably can't teleport out, just like any other vehicle. They can't steal the furnace inside any more than they can do it to a furnace minecart. [Furnaces appear to be a valid block for their teleport ability, but they are listed as not teleporting out of minecarts/boats.]
Do these work in the Nether? in the End? Yes to both, but at danger- in the Nether a lava flow can detonate your airship, in the End the Ender Dragon can attack you.
If usable in the Nether, how to Ghasts and Blazes interact with airships? Blazes fire upon you- but I like the idea of making Ghasts not do so. Perhaps being able to apply a "ghast face" texture to your airship would render them relatively harmless. [While I can see just making Nether operation prohibitively dangerous, the idea that riding an airship provides an immunity to being targeted by ghasts similar to what wearing a pumpkin provides with respect to endermen also seems interesting…]
Irrelevant curiousity:
Why a three bladed propeller? A boat has two oars and minecraft generally has a very orthogonal look… The propellor from Flan's Mod's aircraft had three stubby blades and it looked very nice, even with a square center. Two blades or even four might be better though. Either two or four might also be easier to animate…
Plans to animate the propeller? Yes; whenever a movement key is pressed the propellor will rotate and continue emitting smoke.
Overall I like this proposal; some details to be worked out, but generally,
SUPPORT
Responses in bold.I love some of the suggestions you've brought up; I'll go ahead and toss them into the OP.
A couple of mods have had airships, and while they are fun to fly and a great way to see the scenery they really kill the survival aspect of the game. It's just too easy to fly over mobs and avoid all land combat, and that's with a mod that doesn't even allow you to fire from the airship. I put them into my second journal world but I was so disappointed with the change to the feel of the game that I haven't used them since.
With this proposal you could putt-putt around all night butchering mobs that can't hurt you in any way, since you can fire beyond a skeleton's recognition range. Given that it's easy to travel with 9 stacks of charcoal no fuel requirement could provide a reasonable control. You could burn a charcoal a second and still have enough to stay up from when monsters start to spawn through to dawn.
So, I think airships should stay where they are - in mods, so you can add them if you want a drastic change to the game.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
A couple of mods have had airships, and while they are fun to fly and a great way to see the scenery they really kill the survival aspect of the game. It's just too easy to fly over mobs and avoid all land combat, and that's with a mod that doesn't even allow you to fire from the airship. I put them into my second journal world but I was so disappointed with the change to the feel of the game that I haven't used them since.
With this proposal you could putt-putt around all night butchering mobs that can't hurt you in any way, since you can fire beyond a skeleton's recognition range. Given that it's easy to travel with 9 stacks of charcoal no fuel requirement could provide a reasonable control. You could burn a charcoal a second and still have enough to stay up from when monsters start to spawn through to dawn.
So, I think airships should stay where they are - in mods, so you can add them if you want a drastic change to the game.
Airships have a set height limit- they can't fly above 100 Y. With sea level being set at 62 Y and the clouds at 127, it's not a very tall maximum height, and certainly not out of the sight or shooting range of other players in multiplayer. You are totally right about the skeleton problem, though; I think that could be rectified by having them identify airship-using players at longer range, because a smoke and light-emitting, wheezing and hissing steam airship with a clanking propellor obviously isn't as easy to not notice as a player on foot.
You're also right about charcoal, but at the same time anybody taking the effort to produce nine stacks of it has quite earned the ability to fly without concern for fuel, at least for a few days. I forgot to add some suggestions from a previous poster to the OP- airships will now take MUCH more wool to produce (limiting their early-game availability significantly until you can establish a big enough sheep farm) and will now explode when hit with flames of any kind, as well as fall to the ground then explode a few seconds after hitting it when destroyed.
There aren't enough details yet to do concrete thinking, but some speculatiive consideration of options for how airships will interact with the new NightFlyer mob seems in order.
RE Zeno410's quote:
"With this proposal you could putt-putt around all night butchering mobs that can't hurt you in any way, since you can fire beyond a skeleton's recognition range."
True, but only the XP and drops from after about midnight will persist into the day… and you still would need to land and collect them.
Only shooting them could be target practice, but otherwise just expends durability (and arrows if you don't use an infiinty bow) so I don't see why it would be a problem. Also, it is quite similar in effect to pillaring up to hunt mobs.]
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
"Why does everything have to be so stoopid?" Harvey Pekar (from American Splendor)
WARNING: I have an extemely "grindy" playstyle; YMMV — if this doesn't seem fun to you, mine what you can from it & bin the rest.
The Airship is a light method of air travel, representing a cruder, earlier form of flight than the Elytra- the Furnace Minecart to its Powered Rails, if you will. It resembles a boat with a stubby two-bladed wooden propeller on the rear, hung by four ropes under a larger cubical balloon. A single gold-rimmed gauge (similar to a Clock, but with a white interior and a red arm) is placed at the front of the gondola's inside.
Crafting Recipe
To craft an Airship, you need a Minecart with Furnace (center of table), a Boat (bottom center), two String (bottom left and right), and five Banners filling the rest of the table. This gives you an airship sans any fuel. The airship will have the textures of the Banners as well as their color, on the corresponding sides of the envelope to the positions of the Banners on the Crafting Table.
Behavior
Placing an Airship lets you get inside of it. This won't do anything immediately, though; you'll have to apply Coal on it with right-click in the same way as a Furnace Minecart. Holding coal or charcoal will prevent you from entering, as it will simply fuel the vessel instead. Once this happens the Airship will start emitting smoke from its propeller. A single piece of Coal powers the Airship for only a minute, or 1/3 of the time it would a Furnace Minecart- any other fuels usable by a Furnace Minecart or Furnace can be used in an Airship, at around 3x the consumption rate. Once its fuel is spent it will become less responsive to control and start to steadily descend, as well as no longer emit any smoke particles. The current amount of fuel can be determined by the gauge inside the gondola, which will gradually turn from pointing right to pointing left as it empties of fuel. The airship produces clanking, hissing, and wheezing sounds from its steam engine as it moves.
The vehicle is handled with your movement keys, space bar (for ascending) and CTRL key (for descending). It moves at around the speed of a furnace minecart and can rise and fall at your command, though it has an altitude limit of Y=100 (making it incapable of rising over 38 blocks from the average ground level, or ascending over the highest mountains at Y=126). Using a firework rocket while sitting in an Airship will result in it rapidly rising, possibly to its maximum height- a useful emergency ascent tool if necessary. You can fit yourself and a mob into it; loading a mob into the rear will weigh down the vessel a bit, making it slightly more sluggish in speed and control.
This keeps it from becoming an easy way to avoid monsters or other players in multiplayer, while still being useful for movement, particularly when the ground is uneven. The longer range of vision you can get at higher levels is also good for scouting purposes. Additionally, the steady platform of the airship and its ability to hover at a certain height makes it ideal as a sniping platform or a utility during large building projects. This is assisted by its ability to ignore projectiles fired by the player riding inside it for a few blocks around; as a result arrows you shoot (but not those of enemies) will simply pass through the bottom if you're shooting downwards, for instance.
The Airship has just 8 hearts of health, and four points of natural "armor". It can be destroyed with left-click in the same way as a regular Minecart (shaking a bit until you destroy it, then dropping as an item) but will simply drop a Furnace, some wood, and sticks if destroyed otherwise. When "killed" it will produce heavy smoke and the balloon will emit flame particles; it will rapidly fall to the ground, and explode three or so seconds after landing in a small radius. It will outright explode and dump its occupant out in flight if hit with a fireball, such as that from a Ghast, or otherwise set on fire. Damaged Airships will produce gradually more smoke and can be repaired with Wool Blocks (as most damage goes to the balloon), with more Wool Blocks providing a gradually greater repair.
So that's basically it. Feel free to leave your thoughts on it.
We're doing a mod project, check it out:
What does "reasonably quickly" mean? When making a suggestion, you need to avoid or better define vague terms like this; it's okay if you aren't really sure where to put the numbers (even analogies to similar things will work, like "50% faster than furnace minecarts"), we can hash that out in the resulting discussions as different points are brought up.
You should also provide some options for things like fuel. We have the coal item, sure, but we can compress 9 of those into a coal block so would a coal block result in 9 times the duration? What about blaze rods or lava buckets (they're a furnace fuel, though the much older furnace minecarts aren't yet updated to use anything but coal items)?
It's not part of the original suggestion, but what would happen if the player let loose an elytra rocket while in the airship? Would it just shoot upwards like fireworks normally do or would it act as a booster like with elytra? This sort of peripheral scenario will be brought up by the average player who is already exposed to similar mechanics (ie, elytra) so it's probably a good idea to consider such things--even if it's only going to be a silly easter egg.
Another thing might be to figure out a problem with a similar mechanic that your suggestion is intended to fix or mitigate. This airship, at the cost of being relatively slow, could give you more control than an elytra during flight, making it a better mode for doing sky-high builds or sniping targets or whatever.
I highly appreciate the feedback- it's things like these that I tend to forget when releasing the initial versions of suggestions. Responses are bold.
We're doing a mod project, check it out:
like this idea :>: ; as much because it doesn't present a 'fix' to a game challenge as becasue of … just cool.
Running through a lot of "Gee, I wonder if it could be used to…" scenarios and hitting some questions/ideas…
Crafting:
Does the gondola retain the wood type of the boat? (I'd suggest yes, although that would make it more demanding to implement.)
RE recipe: this seems quite cheap for what it does. I suggest 5 matching banners instead of 5 wool blocks. This would increase the cost by ~6x, but would have the offsetting benefit that the envelope would show the banner pattern on each side & the top. (More lag inducing perhaps, but I don't envision anyone using more than a very few of these at one time and it would look spiffy.)
If you prefer to keep the current recipe, I'd suggest having fabrication/dyeing rules as current for beds. [Wool blocks must match, resulting bed is that color; White beds can be dyed.]
If you find yourself looking for ways to give this item compensating disablities, something you might consider is having the airship revert to its components when "broken" by the player for pickup as furnace minecarts currently do? This would make the item considerably more expensive (in terms of inventory slots) to transport as well as better mirror furnace minecart behavior..
The effect of having the airship destroyed at altitude seems overly harsh, perhaps the failing 'ship might somewhat slow & attenuate fall damage?
If airships are intended as a mid- to late-game feature, this point becomes less important as feather fall & protection armors become common.
Does the airship have durability? If so how much so? (Based on boats, furnaces, and mincarts giving it duability would seem odd, IMO.)
Can an airship be repaired? If so, how so? Suggest by consuming a banner that must be of the same pattern / only the same base color using either an anvil (with / without prior work penalties) or a crafting table. Same pattern, on an anvil, with prior work penalties would make repair much more expensive than any banner (or even just any wool) on a crafting table; I've tried to indicate a range of available options so you can tailor the repair cost to the role you see the item playing. [I'm also assuming it makes sense to have the repair concentrate on damage to the envelope. This seems reasonable given that the effect of being shot out of the sky is that you get the furnace back, the boat is reduced to components, and and the wool envelope vanishes.]
Does the boat keep its player plus one mob seating? Or does the furnace "occupy" the second slot? (The former option would open many more possibilities… )
"I reckon that anything that can power a furnace minecart- or a furnace in general- would power an airship" This would make sense, but furnace minecarts are currently able to use coal & charcoal (not blocks of coal). Suggest retaining this until/if furnace minecarts are updated; this would allow airships to use the furnace minecart fueling code with only a simple change in consumption rate.Depending on how this was coded it could provide an automatic update when furnace minecarts fuel requirements are updated.
Is there some warning of low fuel? [One can check the fuel remaining in a regular furnace, but not one in a minecart.]
"…the steady platform of the airship and its ability to hover at a certain height makes it ideal as a sniping platform or a utility during large building projects."
This sounds like one has more maneuverability in the gondala than one does in a boat. If shooting and block placing range and arc differ from that of a boat, how so?
"This is assisted by its ability to ignore projectiles fired by the player riding inside it for a few blocks around; as a result arrows you shoot (but not those of enemies) will simply pass through the bottom if you're shooting downwards, for instance."
This is one of the few parts I dislike. If I am properly understanding your intent, this sounds like the gondola can function as sheild against fire from the ground while not interfering with fire from inside it – which strikes me as a bit overpowered.... Perhaps a percentage penalty to ground fire would be less so....
How does this effect work when firing between two airships? Although it sounds like targeting ones opponent's envelope might well be the better strategy.
Can any enchantmets affect airships?
Suggest:
FeatherFall — decreases fall damage if the 'ship is 'destoyed'
Protection and its variants
How do Flame and/or Fire Aspect interact with airships?
How do Endermen interact? [Furnaces appear to be a valid block for their teleport ability, but they are listed as not teleporting out of minecarts/boats.]
Do these work in the Nether? in the End?
If usable in the Nether, how to Ghasts and Blazes interact with airships? [While I can see just making Nether operation prohibitively dangerous, the idea that riding an airship provides an immunity to being targeted by ghasts similar to what wearing a pumpkin provides with respect to endermen also seems interesting…]
Irrelevant curiousity:
Why a three bladed propeller? A boat has two oars and minecraft generally has a very orthogonal look… Either two or four might also be easier to animate…
Plans to animate the propeller?
Overall I like this proposal; some details to be worked out, but generally,
SUPPORT
Responses in bold. I love some of the suggestions you've brought up; I'll go ahead and toss them into the OP.
We're doing a mod project, check it out:
A couple of mods have had airships, and while they are fun to fly and a great way to see the scenery they really kill the survival aspect of the game. It's just too easy to fly over mobs and avoid all land combat, and that's with a mod that doesn't even allow you to fire from the airship. I put them into my second journal world but I was so disappointed with the change to the feel of the game that I haven't used them since.
With this proposal you could putt-putt around all night butchering mobs that can't hurt you in any way, since you can fire beyond a skeleton's recognition range. Given that it's easy to travel with 9 stacks of charcoal no fuel requirement could provide a reasonable control. You could burn a charcoal a second and still have enough to stay up from when monsters start to spawn through to dawn.
So, I think airships should stay where they are - in mods, so you can add them if you want a drastic change to the game.
Geographicraft (formerly Climate Control) - Control climate, ocean, and land sizes; stop chunk walls; put modded biomes into Default worlds, and more!
RTG plus - All the beautiful terrain of RTG, plus varied and beautiful trees and forests.
Airships have a set height limit- they can't fly above 100 Y. With sea level being set at 62 Y and the clouds at 127, it's not a very tall maximum height, and certainly not out of the sight or shooting range of other players in multiplayer. You are totally right about the skeleton problem, though; I think that could be rectified by having them identify airship-using players at longer range, because a smoke and light-emitting, wheezing and hissing steam airship with a clanking propellor obviously isn't as easy to not notice as a player on foot.
You're also right about charcoal, but at the same time anybody taking the effort to produce nine stacks of it has quite earned the ability to fly without concern for fuel, at least for a few days. I forgot to add some suggestions from a previous poster to the OP- airships will now take MUCH more wool to produce (limiting their early-game availability significantly until you can establish a big enough sheep farm) and will now explode when hit with flames of any kind, as well as fall to the ground then explode a few seconds after hitting it when destroyed.
We're doing a mod project, check it out:
Something I forgot in my earlier post:
There aren't enough details yet to do concrete thinking, but some speculatiive consideration of options for how airships will interact with the new NightFlyer mob seems in order.
RE Zeno410's quote:
"With this proposal you could putt-putt around all night butchering mobs that can't hurt you in any way, since you can fire beyond a skeleton's recognition range."
True, but only the XP and drops from after about midnight will persist into the day… and you still would need to land and collect them.
Only shooting them could be target practice, but otherwise just expends durability (and arrows if you don't use an infiinty bow) so I don't see why it would be a problem. Also, it is quite similar in effect to pillaring up to hunt mobs.]