Airship Guide

[Dancetwist]

I can't seem to get the exact formula for travel time. They round somewhere in the middle of the calculation and/or the multiplier isn't exactly 60. Without an accurate formula, I wasn't able to get an accurate coordinate for home.

If you'd like a quick guide, we've compiled all the relevant times, distances, and Airship attributes in shared spreadsheet for everyone! It also includes a Route Planner to find the most efficient path across up to 5 islands and Rigging advice for keeping to a daily schedule

Pomwreath Airship Planner (Downloadable)

Since the distance and travel time don't have an exact relationship on the player side, estimating the true coordinates can only get as close as the real travel times and distances you used as inputs (and usually ends up going in very reasonable-looking, but misleading loops very quickly)

[Kuponutz]

Why will it not let me put the Tatanora propellers on our ship? Rank 50, has Tatanora Hull, Enterprise Bladder, Enterprise Forecastle and Enterprise Aftcastle currently.

[Dancetwist]

Why will it not let me put the Tatanora propellers on our ship? Rank 50, has Tatanora Hull, Enterprise Bladder, Enterprise Forecastle and Enterprise Aftcastle currently.

You're out of Build Points! Since BP caps at 61 for Rank 50 Airships, you can only use 2 x Tatanora pieces together if the other components are 1 x Bronco and 1 x Invincible

[Jade-Nephrite]

Got a quick question, what do I need to unlock to be able to craft the Invincible II airship parts? I can only craft Bronco, Invincible & Enterprise at the moment.

[Moirethe]

Got a quick question, what do I need to unlock to be able to craft the Invincible II airship parts? I can only craft Bronco, Invincible & Enterprise at the moment.

Check the schematic board under Airship projects. It'll tell you what items you need to unlock the Invincible II prototype.

[PotatoTree]

The airship calculator linked in the OP is nice (http://ffxivforge.appspot.com/) but I've found it contains a lot of errors. Every time I try to make a set, I'd always be missing something. For example, the Enterprise Aftcastle needs wolfram ingots, which it does not list.

[Dante_Allege]

Introduction
What does each stat influence? Speed and range seem simple enough, but what about retrieval, surveillance, and favor?

I believe that I have an idea of what Retrieval and Surveillance do, how they differ. By looking at the Voyage Log after a journey, going from top to bottom, it seems as though the surveillance skill is used first. After the log considers the skill, it finds something. Following that, the retrieval skill is used and a yield of the item that was found is gathered.

So, in conclusion, I think surveillance decides what item your airship will find and retrieval decides how much you will yield.

[Nyalia]

So, in conclusion, I think surveillance decides what item your airship will find and retrieval decides how much you will yield.

Have you looked through our collected logs to see if that surveillance idea checks out and/or is supported by the data? We do have quite a lot of data at this point - over a thousand voyages's worth.

I feel that the obfuscating factor with the surveillance and retrieval numbers is that later sectors require more to have the same effect. Like, maybe a Survey or Retrieval of 70 in sector SC01 is the same as a Survey/Retrieval of 80 in SC05. Since each airship tier can be seen as +10 to a stat (I know it's +14, but the -4 to another stat averages the gains to +10), and there are 6 tiers of barrel cost (that's what's used for determining survey times, not the star rating, so I generally use it in calcs instead of the star rating), what if each barrel tier corresponds to a survey/retrieval value? So, adjusted survey/retrieval score = survey/retireval - (barrels*10). So, in sector SC22, a Survey of 90 would be the same as having a Survey of 40 in SC01. With a Survey of 120 in SC22, that would be like having a 70 in SC01.

I don't know if I like those numbers. Even if the basic idea is on the right track, it feels like 10 per barrel is too high. I'll have to run some numbers later...


I can definitely say though that a higher Retrieval rating increases the chance to get higher Retrieval scores, and a higher Survey rating at least correlates with getting a second item more often. I haven't seen any evidence that higher survey means "rarer" items, only second items.

[BonzaiFerroni]

Hey guys! \o/ Just wanted to check in! I know the discussion has started to lessen now that we seem to have discovered all the current content (short of actually knowing what stats do!), although I'm sure there will be plenty more to discuss when new content is released.

Both Nyalia and I might find ourselves having less free time in the near future, although I intend to keep updating the guide as much as possible as more information comes up.

It might be a good idea to move some of the more concrete information in the guide to a wiki, so people would always have an up-to-date source of information as a backup. It seems like the http://ffxiv.consolegameswiki.com/ wiki currently has a more complete article than http://ffxiv.gamerescape.com/. It also has less intrusive ads, which is a big plus. I'll start moving some things there, feel free to help out!

When I started out, a lot of the information I posted came from my own notes, but over time it has changed drastically and I became more of a curator while the main source of information was the community. I'm going to continue to fill that role here, but a direct source like a wiki would be great to have in addition.

Also, if anyone is interested in making their own guide, feel free to use any/all of the information in my guide! (You might want to check with Nyalia to use hers) Just share a link with us so I can put it in my community resources section. As far as I am concerned, the more good sources of information we have out there, the better! \o/

And of course this will always be a great place to come and discuss airships and share your discoveries. I'm looking forward to the next round of airship content, it is going to be amazing :D

[Nyalia]

Personally, I prefer using these forums over wikis (until they finally permaban me). Until I quit the game (which could happen soonish because baby), I'll be updating my airship and desynth guides on this forum every patch with any new information.

If other people want to copy/paste my guides to other places, please don't copy the text portions verbatim? I don't really care about people copying the data, but when stupid jokes or specific quirky turns of phrases I make in my guides turn up in other places without attribution, it's really kinda irritating.