Canoe or other small boat?

[DeanF]

New player, here.  If I'm reading the wiki correctly then we have the primitive raft and the sailboat, and nothing in between.  Perhaps we could have another small boat in which to use our paddle?

Several examples could be justified:

• The Native American Canoe was traditionally a wooden frame with a bark hull.  (I don't think that the game has a bark equivalent?)
• The Welsh Coracle was a round boat made of hides or leather over a stick frame.
• The Tibetan Ku Dru, Indian Parisal, and Native American Bull Boat are nigh identical to the coracle.
• The Inuit Umiak and Kayak were also traditionally hides over a wooden frame, but they definitely had finer lines than a coracle.
• The Irish Currach is much like a coracle or umiak, though they also tend to have finer lines.
• The Iraqi Kuphar is much like a coracle, but could also be made of tied reed bundles as well as sticks and hides, so construction might just need reeds and flax twine.
• The Ethiopian Tankwa is a more narrow reed boat.
• The Peoples of Lake Titicaca, the so-called Marsh Arabs, Egypt, and many others have traditions of other narrow reed boats.

Building these should be more involved than just a recipe (as the raft is built).  Instead they should be constructed, more like a sailboat.  So first you construct a frame on the ground from sticks and rope or flax twine, then you make the hide hull and add it to the frame, etc.  Or for a reed boat make a reed keel, then add reed floats for the sides, with both made from reeds and flax twine.  These boats should not be storable in an inventory space in the way that a raft is, but the boats should still be able to be portaged by being carried in the off hand.  They should also be able to be placed on land for safe keeping.  The hide boats should be constructable out of either pelts or leather, otherwise they become copper age boats rather than stone age ones.

(Y'know, we should have a use for un-oiled hides before they rot.  Maybe cut them into rawhide strips that can be used in some recipes as a stand-in for rope or flax twine?  Native Americans tied their canoes, kayaks, and umiaks together with rawhide strips, and coracles were made in similar fashion.  Hides could give different yields of rawhide strips; 1 for small, 2 for medium, 3 for large, 4 for huge, or whatever.  Braided leather ropes were a thing, too.)

Perhaps three stone age boat variants are called for: a "Reed boat", a "Hide Boat", and a "Hide Roundboat".

Hear me out...

The advantage of truly round boats like the coracle are that they are very stable and easy to make, but the disadvantages are that they are slow and not very maneuverable since they tend to spin.  But some of them were huge.  So you could have one that moves glacially slowly but carries a lot of cargo instead- see picture below.

For the Hide Roundboat give it 7 "spaces" in a 2-3-2 distribution, with the boatman in the rear-right space and reed chests or storage vessels able to to be placed in the others.  But the front-left, front-right, and rear-left spaces can carry other players instead if desired (like the raft).  I would argue that it should actually be 5% slower than the raft- it's advantage is the large cargo/passenger capacity.  (The raft's big advantage is that it can fit in an inventory space.)

But the narrower Reed Boat and Hide Boat should only have 5 total "spaces" in a linear distribution.  With one boatman they sit in space #4, with #1, #2, #3, and #5 being for cargo in the form of reed chests or storage vessels.  But with another crewman aboard then space #2 holds the second player instead.  The reed boat should only be as fast as the raft, since they tend to be heavy and waterlogged, and the hide boat should be 5% faster than the raft.  The Reed Boat probably should be the least complex to construct.

Hmm.  I kind of like that tradeoff in cargo capacity versus speed, for three primitive boats for which it is about equally difficult to source materials.  Flax is scarce on the ground to make twine for the reed boat, whereas pelts require a bit of hunting.

With two players paddling than the boat (or raft) should go a little faster, maybe another 5% increased speed.  (But no bonus for more than two paddlers in the Hide Roundboat due to it's awkwardness.)  Those speeds should be for running-effort paddling, incurring massive hunger increases.  But we should be able to walk-effort paddle, too, at some lesser speed.  (The raft as well.)  Maybe 75% of running-effort speed?

Those would be stone age boats.  For the copper/bronze age there could be a "Plank Boat" too, dimensionally similar to the reed boat and hide boat but 10% faster than the raft, similar to the more modern Irish currahs, the larger American cedar canoes, and innumerable other small boats the world over.  With the 5% speed bonus for two paddlers it would max out at 15% over raft speed- almost as fast as a sailboat, at least for as long as the crew's hunger held out.

I guess that I could actually come up with a plank boat that is slow but with more cargo, too, for a fifth boat variant.  Maybe give it 8 "spaces" in a 1-2-2-2-1 distribution, and make it 5% faster than a raft?  Call it a Plank Skiff?  Skiffs are often blunt, flat-bottomed, and slow.

 

Edited April 16 by DeanF

[Zx573]

I love the idea of some early game boats/improvements to the existing raft system.

Plus the secondary idea of rawhide strips is really good too.

The canoe I'd love to see would be a dugout. I'm not certain that the mechanic would be entirely worth implementing for just this purpose, but the idea of alternating burning a log and chopping at it to make the canoe is really engaging to me.

 

[DeanF]

On 4/17/2026 at 1:50 PM, Zx573 said:

The canoe I'd love to see would be a dugout. I'm not certain that the mechanic would be entirely worth implementing for just this purpose, but the idea of alternating burning a log and chopping at it to make the canoe is really engaging to me.

Huh.  I could almost see that working like flint knapping...  Great idea.