non charisian Navy ships

Silverwall wrote:...well beyond what is doable with a simple waterwheel.

I suspect you have no idea what is "doable with a simple water wheel."

Most of the "Industrial Revolution" -- such as textile mills, Springfield Armory and the "American System of interchangeable parts," Iron foundries with trip-hammer forges and rolling mills for rails and plate iron and steel, etc -- was water powered. Steam gets a lot more credit for the Industrial Revolution than it probably deserves; The Industrial Revolution is responsible for Steam Engine rather than the reverse.

Weird Harold wrote:

Silverwall wrote:...well beyond what is doable with a simple waterwheel.

I suspect you have no idea what is "doable with a simple water wheel."

Most of the "Industrial Revolution" -- such as textile mills, Springfield Armory and the "American System of interchangeable parts," Iron foundries with trip-hammer forges and rolling mills for rails and plate iron and steel, etc -- was water powered. Steam gets a lot more credit for the Industrial Revolution than it probably deserves; The Industrial Revolution is responsible for Steam Engine rather than the reverse.

Well aware of those things. What I was trying to say is that there must be other things beyond simple power levels that prevented it being developed until so late in our time line. While you can do amazing things with waterwheels there is absolutely a max power level on them you don't have on steam engines. The most powerful waterwheel was reported to have approx 100hp performance. Even in the early 1800s stationary steam engines far exceeded this.

As to why it took so long my theory and readings suggest that it was the development of efficient hydrolic power systems such as heavy industrial hydrolic presses (a concept actually dating to sometime in the late 1700s). RFC touched on these briefly when Howmsmyn introduced his turbine condensor thingy. I also remember this being a fairly revolutionary concept in the book. So I took this to mean that pre-merlin they did not have this school of technologies to build on.

Silverwall wrote:Well aware of those things. What I was trying to say is that there must be other things beyond simple power levels that prevented it being developed until so late in our time line. While you can do amazing things with waterwheels there is absolutely a max power level on them you don't have on steam engines. The most powerful waterwheel was reported to have approx 100hp performance. Even in the early 1800s stationary steam engines far exceeded this.

As to why it took so long ...

Simple economics and conservatism.

Why replace a water wheel that has provided virtually free power for several centuries with a recently invented contraption that you have to buy fuel for that is prone to blowing up and destroying entire factories?

Especially economics. There's a mill at Upper Canada Village that has both a water wheel and steam engine [and not an early model, either. IIRC it was installed in the 1860s]. According to the guide, it was _never_ used if there was enough head of water in the millpond to turn the millstone. If the miller ran it too much he'd be at risk of going bankrupt due to the cost of fuel. I believe it was originally installed because the miller was sold on the idea of freeing himself from dependence on the water supply; purchase cost was not nearly as high as operating cost turned out to be.

Weird Harold wrote:

Silverwall wrote:Well aware of those things. What I was trying to say is that there must be other things beyond simple power levels that prevented it being developed until so late in our time line. While you can do amazing things with waterwheels there is absolutely a max power level on them you don't have on steam engines. The most powerful waterwheel was reported to have approx 100hp performance. Even in the early 1800s stationary steam engines far exceeded this.

As to why it took so long ...

Simple economics and conservatism.

Why replace a water wheel that has provided virtually free power for several centuries with a recently invented contraption that you have to buy fuel for that is prone to blowing up and destroying entire factories?

Silverwall wrote:
absolutely we did historically which is why I suggest the initial tech level is about 1650 level. This is post the Spanish armarda and well into the age of classical european musket warfare and suggests that simple cannon should (And are) common. Ship building however is significanly behind that pre merlin but there is a world of difference between what is doable with 1650s level tech even with pockets of more advanced knowledge such as suprisingly good bathtub chemistry and the kind of universal technology levels needed for advanced mass production machine manufacture suitable for building pre-dreadnaughts and magazine bolt action rifles.

There you go again. How many times does RFC have to say that the artificial Safehold initial technology level does not map simply onto any RL period, being relatively advanced in some things and relatively behind in others? He is the only one who knows precisely what the initial level is and the fact that he hasn't published his 'technical bible' or shown it to you doesn't mean he doesn't have one or that it isn't reasonably consistent.
'Reasonable ' given that the object is to write interesting novels not educate readers in RL industrial history, that is.