Post by Rordrik on Apr 20, 2015 3:16:12 GMT
Very well, Sam wants a thread discussing the size of the island since I brought it up, so here it is. Be warned I will be doing lots of math and explanations of how I produced the numbers. All you will have to do is look at the end of each section if you do not want to look through all the math for conclusions.
With all of that said I think a good place to start is by trying to figure out what might be an ‘average’ size lair for a dragon.
Lair Size
Now every dragon is going to have different desires for how big or small their lair is, since it is basically the same as what we would call a home. So for simplicity’s sake let’s say the average dragon is 6.5 (2 meters) tall at the shoulder and a total of 26 feet (8 meters) long.
The average human is about 5.5 feet (1-2/3 meters) tall and about 1.5 feet (.5 meters) wide, just to be roundabout figures. The height will be known as human length and the width as human height, just to make it simpler to compare humans to dragons.
So I live in a small two story home in the city that is a total of 1344 square feet (409.66 square meters), or roughly 25 feet (7.62 meters) by 25 feet for two stories. If we try to convert that size house into a dragon size house let’s look at the scale difference between the average human size and the average dragon size.
Human vs Dragon length:
length ratio=(dragon length (L))/(human length(l))=(26 feet)/(5.5 feet)=4.72
Human vs Dragon Height:
height ratio=(dragon height (H))/(human height(h))=(6.5 feet)/(1.5 feet)=4.33
So each ratio is about 4.5 times bigger, in both dimensions. So that means that each side needs to increase by this size.
total lair ratio=length ratio*height ratio=4.72*4.33=20.5
This means that the average sized dragon lair would be.
Dragon Lair Square Feet
Dragon Lair Area=Human House Area*total lair ratio=1344 〖ft〗^2*20.5=27531〖ft〗^2 (8392 m^2)
So the average dragon’s lair would be about the size of two Olympic swimming pools side by side. Of course some would be deeper than others, some bigger or smaller based on size of the dragon or just effort put into making their lair.
Now some of you may be wondering, Rordrik why should we look into the lair size? What does that have to do with the size of the island? Well if we want to make an island big enough that it could supposedly house all these dragons it needs to be big enough for just that in general.
So let’s say the island needs to be big enough to hold 1,000 of these sized lairs. Well simply add three zeros and we get that you would need 27,531,000〖ft〗^2 (.98 〖miles〗^2 ) or 8,392,000 m^2 (8.392 〖km〗^2 ) with no space given in between them at all. So even to house 1,000 creations you would need no bigger space than a square mile if you wanted to really pack them in together.
Now of course we want to not have them so close and there are different territories to divide them up even more, but it helps bring into perspective that if we want the island to be the size of the British Isles, that is actually quite plausible to house even these big creatures if there's about 1000 of them all together.
Travel Time
Using my trusty Dungeons and Dragons Draconimicon book it states that a dragon of this average size we have discussed can travel 150 feet in 6 seconds while flying, albeit with not very good maneuverability being such large and heavy creatures. This means that they travel 1500 feet in one minute, or 90000 feet in one hour. This is the equivalent to 17 miles per hour or 27 km/hour. So if a dragon travels for 12 hours with no rest they can cover 204 miles or 324 km.
So to make the island large enough that it takes any noticeable length of time for dragons to get to wherever they want to be it would need to be an island, again at least as big as the British Isles which at 250 miles (402 km) wide at the widest point and 930 miles (1497 km) long. That would mean that even by normal dragon flight speed it would still take days to get from one end to the other, but could be completely traversed in just under a week of traveling only 12 hours a day.
Congratulations to those of you who made it through all that and are still reading all this. You've earned a cookie and the right to yell at me for any bad math you see.
Okay all math aside now I think this gives everyone a reasonable idea of what possibly to look at. So, would an island the size of the British Isles actually be about right? Strangely enough to me, that seems actually a reasonable size based on the math at least. But of course this is up for discussion, what does everyone else think?
With all of that said I think a good place to start is by trying to figure out what might be an ‘average’ size lair for a dragon.
Lair Size
Now every dragon is going to have different desires for how big or small their lair is, since it is basically the same as what we would call a home. So for simplicity’s sake let’s say the average dragon is 6.5 (2 meters) tall at the shoulder and a total of 26 feet (8 meters) long.
The average human is about 5.5 feet (1-2/3 meters) tall and about 1.5 feet (.5 meters) wide, just to be roundabout figures. The height will be known as human length and the width as human height, just to make it simpler to compare humans to dragons.
So I live in a small two story home in the city that is a total of 1344 square feet (409.66 square meters), or roughly 25 feet (7.62 meters) by 25 feet for two stories. If we try to convert that size house into a dragon size house let’s look at the scale difference between the average human size and the average dragon size.
Human vs Dragon length:
length ratio=(dragon length (L))/(human length(l))=(26 feet)/(5.5 feet)=4.72
Human vs Dragon Height:
height ratio=(dragon height (H))/(human height(h))=(6.5 feet)/(1.5 feet)=4.33
So each ratio is about 4.5 times bigger, in both dimensions. So that means that each side needs to increase by this size.
total lair ratio=length ratio*height ratio=4.72*4.33=20.5
This means that the average sized dragon lair would be.
Dragon Lair Square Feet
Dragon Lair Area=Human House Area*total lair ratio=1344 〖ft〗^2*20.5=27531〖ft〗^2 (8392 m^2)
So the average dragon’s lair would be about the size of two Olympic swimming pools side by side. Of course some would be deeper than others, some bigger or smaller based on size of the dragon or just effort put into making their lair.
Now some of you may be wondering, Rordrik why should we look into the lair size? What does that have to do with the size of the island? Well if we want to make an island big enough that it could supposedly house all these dragons it needs to be big enough for just that in general.
So let’s say the island needs to be big enough to hold 1,000 of these sized lairs. Well simply add three zeros and we get that you would need 27,531,000〖ft〗^2 (.98 〖miles〗^2 ) or 8,392,000 m^2 (8.392 〖km〗^2 ) with no space given in between them at all. So even to house 1,000 creations you would need no bigger space than a square mile if you wanted to really pack them in together.
Now of course we want to not have them so close and there are different territories to divide them up even more, but it helps bring into perspective that if we want the island to be the size of the British Isles, that is actually quite plausible to house even these big creatures if there's about 1000 of them all together.
Travel Time
Using my trusty Dungeons and Dragons Draconimicon book it states that a dragon of this average size we have discussed can travel 150 feet in 6 seconds while flying, albeit with not very good maneuverability being such large and heavy creatures. This means that they travel 1500 feet in one minute, or 90000 feet in one hour. This is the equivalent to 17 miles per hour or 27 km/hour. So if a dragon travels for 12 hours with no rest they can cover 204 miles or 324 km.
So to make the island large enough that it takes any noticeable length of time for dragons to get to wherever they want to be it would need to be an island, again at least as big as the British Isles which at 250 miles (402 km) wide at the widest point and 930 miles (1497 km) long. That would mean that even by normal dragon flight speed it would still take days to get from one end to the other, but could be completely traversed in just under a week of traveling only 12 hours a day.
Congratulations to those of you who made it through all that and are still reading all this. You've earned a cookie and the right to yell at me for any bad math you see.
Okay all math aside now I think this gives everyone a reasonable idea of what possibly to look at. So, would an island the size of the British Isles actually be about right? Strangely enough to me, that seems actually a reasonable size based on the math at least. But of course this is up for discussion, what does everyone else think?