Editing Warship (section)

==Ancient Times==
Ships at this time were restricted to rivers or coastlines, partly because they could not endure rough conditions on ocean seas, but also because primitive navigation techniques restricted ships to remain in sight of land. As a result, most battles wouldn't take place far from major ports or routes. Before the invention of the cannon, there were really only a few ways for ships to fight each other:
*Boarding: getting onboard the enemy ship to take it by force, killing or capturing it's existing crew and passengers. This was usually the preferred method of combat because A: those ground troops you were carrying were useful for more than just ballast, B: it used mostly the same skill set that you used for ground and city fighting and C: if you won, you got a new ship for your fleet and some captives.
*Firing various missiles at the enemy (arrows, javelins, catapults, ballista): usually this was done to kill enemy soldiers and crew rather than to damage the ship. Arrows and Javelins can't do much damage to ships and Siege weapons which could were inaccurate and cumbersome.
*Ramming; a hundred tonnes of wood has a good deal of kinetic energy.  To be most effective it required a specially designed prow, a skilled crew, some room to maneuver, and an enemy dumb enough to show you an opening to try it, but the Athenians and Syracusans were pretty good at it.   If nothing else this can make boarding easier and disorient the rammed ship. Still occasionally seen as late as 2020, when a Venezuelan warship attempted to ram an unarmed passenger ship and [[Fail|sunk ''itself'']].
*Setting them on fire; at the time ships were generally sealed with tar or tree resins (for wood) or animal fats (for leather), meaning they'd burn like a torch if you got them started.

The last two in particular had a high probability of getting your own ships destroyed, so naval combat was kind of a crapshoot.  

===Ship Types===
*'''Galley''': Sailships that came with long rows of oarsmen to help give the ship an extra boost of speed. Very useful for maneuvering against the wind, or gaining speed to ram the enemy. The most common ones used two rows of oars (known as the bireme), but some of the larger warships could have as many as five, and some sources claim that some flagships had as many as ''ten''. The Romans had a special version that used a spike to lock ships and allow their marines to board, as they found that if they fought better on land than on sea, then they'll just apply the same tactics onto boats, however they didn't seem to catch on for long beyond the Punic Wars as while they were excellent for boarding they created a seaworthiness problem that caused a fuck ton of deaths when one of the fleets got caught in a storm after returning from a victory. Because of the extra manpower needed to operate them, galleys had a grim reputation for needing large numbers of slaves (though this only actually applied to galleys from the 16th century and after). They were still in use until the 19th century by the Barbary pirates, when they were finally defeated for good by more modern navies. Latter galleys had cannons, but given the need for rowers you could only put a few guns onboard the front of one.
*'''Fire Ships''': Usually made from suprlus ships or even rafts, sometimes one navy would try to set the enemy on fire by setting one of their own boats on fire, and hope that it drifts into their ships. At the very least, it could create panic, as the enemy would try to steer the hell away from them. The Dutch used several "Hellburners" to ram and destroy a bridge in the Siege of Antwerp during the 80 Years War. During World War 2 obsolete destroyer HMS Campbeltown was filled with explosives and rammed into the Saint-Nazaire docks, depriving the Germans of a battleship drydock in the Atlantic and locking the battleship Tirpitz to Norwegian fjords where she was eventually sunk without firing anything other than anti-air guns at the Allies.
*'''Siphōn''': A warship used by the Byzantine Empire, which deployed flamethrowers using an incendiary compound known as "Greek fire". Highly effective albeit short-ranged, the formula to produce Greek fire was eventually lost and so the ships fell out of use by the 13th century. The formula still has not been rediscovered, although historians suspect it employed a mix of naphtha and quicklime. 
*'''Longship''': A Viking galley that was long and narrow, allowing it to enter shallow waters for amphibious deployment. They had a characteristic large square sail and the sides were typically lined with shields.