New Ship.

[Jimbo]

Nice idea.  Have you tried to "bash" some  sections together with wood, or cardboard, to get a
3 dimensional view?

[Sir Pleamo]

Andy R, that's really a great idea, indeed I was thinking about such things too for a while!

maybe if you ask for sir pleamo's help a complete 3-d model could be made to better understand the "scale" of the problems.
  and he is also a genius on his knowledge of system-x possibilities.

Thanks cachalote for such kindness, but yes, you are right! SYSTEM-X would be the solution! Here are some (few sketchy) ideas about Andy R's Ship-construction. Of course there are Sys-X and scaled in some "standard"-sizes used by playmobil.

i agree that keeping the water out is a real problem.
tipically one solution would be to let it in and pumpig it out faster - something that only a mechanized set would accomplish.
another solution would be sealed loints (with o-rings for example).
this could work but the appearence of the hull when seen from the outside would be terrible.
what drama.

I think even the "waterproof"-problem is not a real hard one (even if I have not included them in these pics, but if you are interested in my solution I can post them too.)

[Sir Pleamo]

...and here are some of the parts in detail which geobra has to bring us

[Gustavo]

Wow! But how big would such a ship be?

[WarriorOfToys]

OMG Brilliant!
I understand now...
That is an amazing idea Andy!
I really hope Playmobil starts building ships like this!
Will each section have a mast?
Or will there be the option of 2 sections?
And I see you can make it wider as well (something you have already said? ).
Amazing, I really hope Playmobil looks at this.

[cachalote]

as i told you andy, sir pleamo did the trick.
  this is really what can be called "taking it one step ahead".
thank you so much sir pleamo, for showing us andy's idea in 3-d.
i can still see a "looks" problem with the appearance of the vertical joints - planking can just take care of the horizontal ones.
... and i would love to hear sir playmo's idea on how to water-tight this conctruction.

by the way, on another thread you can all see tha potential of sir pleamo's wonderful work - http://www.playmofriends.com/forum/index.php?topic=5760.0 

[BlackPearl2006]

THere's another thread about an expandable ship:
http://www.playmofriends.com/forum/index.php?topic=5892.0

I love the additional thought Andy has outlined, and Sir Pleamo's pics are spot-on awesome!  If only Playmobil would make it reality.

Here is my crude mock-up of how the ship could be expandable.  It would feature a base set consisting of a bow, a stern, and one mid-section piece, forming a tri-mast ship.

The middle piece can be expanded by adding additional mid-section hull pieces.

Additionally, the ship can also be expanded by additional deck levels, allowing multi-decked ships.

Different configurations can be accomplished by adding extra topmasts, spritsail masts, etc....

I want it!

[BlackPearl2006]

and to give people a sense of scale if such an expandable ship were to live up to enormous potential:

Just in case anyone was wondering, I decided to play around with some proportions.

Using the 3286 ship as a reference, and basing the size off the playmobil cannons, were Playmobil to release a grand flag ship ala HMS Victory, brandishing 100 guns across 3 gundecks (not including the main deck), AND have a proportionate bottom hull to accommodate a realistic waterline, according to my calculations, in Playmobil proportions, the HMS Playmobil Flagship would be about 1.8 metres long (1.3 metres without the bowsprit) and 1.8 metres tall to the highest mast.

This is about a ratio of 3:1 (as far as length goes) when compared to the existing 3286 ship that is only about 60 cm long, and about the same in heighth.  (technically though, this imperial ship is 9 times bigger than the 3286; it would literally take 9 3286 ships to hack up and join together to make this ship with 3 gundecks totalling 100 guns.  Just in relative cost alone, considering a brand new 3286 at original retail went for about US$80-90, that would bring this size ship to about US$720 at LEAST!)

My measurements may be a little off, but the point is, this thing would be about as tall if not TALLER than me!  (I am 1.6 metres tall). Just to check, I did stack 3 3286 ships end to end and layed down next to them to find that their length did in fact exceed my own.  From the pic you can see the 100-gun warship in playmobil proportions is roughly 3 times as long as the 3286 ship, just to accommodate about 15-16 guns per row (one 3286 can theoretically accommodate about 5 guns across the length of its hull, although Playmobil only gave us 4 ports).

Take a look at this behemoth monstrosity!



Bigger, even, I wager, than MacGuyver's Dolphin.  Hmmm, after looking at how unrealistically huge this would have to be, I am beginning to think MacGayver's Dolphin is the closest we may ever see to a Playmobil multi-decked flagship.  This just seems too big for a company to produce realistically.

I still think it may have SOME hope if it can be built through a series of expansion components.  I think, realistically, perhaps a mere extended hull with a third mast ala MacGuyver's Unicorn may be the best we can hope for from Playmobil, without having to customize one ourselves.

[Wolf Knight]

Magnificent design!! 

[WarriorOfToys]

After studying this a little longer, I think I see a problem...
The ship, with guns, is about 2 steck castle pieces tall!
This will work great for in water, but what about on land?
The ships will be fairly ridiculously tall...

Unless, you took the bottom section off.
Still, being that tall...
I think it will continue to raise a few problems.
(Mostly production wise.)