The Church of Abadar has stolen purchased an idea from the Church of Tet. While the Tettians wanted to crowdsource theological writing, and so offered prizes to the best chapters, the Abadarans want to beat piracy and facilitate international trade.

They want a way to get a heavy trading galley up to the sorts of speeds speedboats have been managing, so that trade can compete with the pirates.

The Shrink Item Two-Stroke Spring-Engine costs 15,000 gp and needs a full time fifth circle engine-wizard to run, and can produce around 150 horsepower. They'd appreciate anything cheaper than that, per unit output. They'd really appreciate anything that can produce 10,000 horsepower, because that makes a lot of things possible that aren't otherwise. It's better if it's cheap and doesn't need constant expensive service to maintain.

They'll offer really quite large prizes, for anything with enough economic potential to pay back the prize. They checked and Abadar said it was a good idea.

Wow, sure hope you find what you're looking for.

Why would you hope that?

You're the bad guys, shouldn't you want us to lose?

We want faster ships so we can avoid you!

You still haven't realised how this works, have you?

When we Win, you Lose, because we can steal more of your stuff, and when you Lose you have less to steal so we Lose too.

When you Win, you make international trade easier, which makes there be more of it, which gives us more to steal from, which makes you Lose but not as much as you're already Winning, and we're Winning too cause we get more loot!

We both want the same thing here, more international trade at greater speed and volume.

No matter what clever trick you pull I'm sure a small speedboat with the same tricks will still be faster.

...

God, please smite these people for us.

Anyway, suggestion anyone?

You can get a surprising amount of thrust out a Decanter of Endless Water, for just 9,000 GP.

The decanter itself is maybe 10 horsepower of force, because it comes out at a high speed.

What if build a tube like a mast, put it at the top, set it to geyser? The water fills the tube at 30 gallons per round, and the weight of the water creates water pressure equal to the height of your tower. Putting it at at the top of a 50 metre tower and you can get an extra ... 12 horsepower.

Never mind.

That's not a solution for boats but it is a solution for quite a lot of other situations.

Here, have a small prize.

Robaldo will anonymously submit a larger version of the spring-engine he already designed, faster than anyone else because he's already did it all before the contest was announced.

It uses four springs, each of which is 10 feet long and weighs 800 pounds. Rather than a helix, they're made of solid rings of metal at an angle, stacked on top of each other and thin enough that they can compress inwards.

It's way too much power for a small vessel, and too heavy also, but it's the best they're going to get for an industrial scale. It can't get a galley to speedboat velocities but it's still faster than sailing or rowing.

We'll give it a prize, but it's still really expensive.

We are now only accepting entries that don't involve permanent Shrink Item being flipped back and forth really fast.

An Iron Golem- It costs 150,000 gp. Golems aren't the solution here.

A Huge Animated Object can be permenancied for 15,000 gp, a comparable price. It's only got a "Speed" of 30 ft, but it can lift 6400 pounds straight up above it's head so ... it's 60 horsepower?

A Gargantuan Animated Object needs a 16th level spellcaster to make, or you can use a few tricks like a Prayer Bead of Karma to increase your caster level temporarily. You can turn your Gargantuan ship into an Animated Object and permenancy it for 15k gp, but it's dispellable, or you can make it properly as a construct creature for 40k gp.

It has 38 strength, so it can carry 38,400 pounds, by default.
Muleback Cords increase the strength by 8 for carrying purposes, for only 1k gp, so 46 strength or 920 * 4 * 4 * 8 = 117,760 pounds (as a heavy load).
Ant Haul triples the carry capacity, you can either have a low-level ships' wizard on board or buy an item for it too, it's only first circle and lasts 2 hours per level, getting you 353,280 pounds which is 176 tons.

How much is our target here?

A trading galley typically carries up to 150 tons or cargo or up to 250 passengers, but that stuff isn't that dense or small. It's 20 ft wide and 130 ft long and 3 decks tall because it needs all that space for goods and people. Most cargo isn't just a huge stone block.

Also galleys only cost around 10,000 gp, and usually travel in groups, so suggestions that increase supply by more than just buying more galleys will be of far more value.

What's the current status-quo for teleport-based logistics?

How do the prices of using it compare to cargo ships?

Most teleports are provided by fifth-circle wizards, or clerics with the Travel domain, who usually don't like working as mules. They only have a couple spell-slots per day, and usually want to teleport back the same day.

They can usually get a couple of pack animals to teleport along with them, mules are common, who can carry in the vicinity of a few hundred pounds each, more with Ant Haul or Muleback Cords or Bags of Holding but nothing that can compete with the sheer volume a cargo ship.

It's worth it for military logistics, for high-value items and magical equipment, for dense items like gold and silver if you're the Bank of Abadar and want to move a lot of money around very securely.

It's not even close to worth it for grain, or fabrics, or beer.

It's outright impossible for some goods like lumber where there's no way to put an entire tree on the back of a mule no matter how strong the mule is, or economy-class passengers where you can't stuff more than a handful into a Bag of Holding and the experience is terrible.

Gargantuan Constructs are massive overkill.

A Huge Quadrapedal Animated Object Construct is enough, and only costs 25k (construct) + 1k (muleback cord) + 2k (Heavyload Belt for Ant Hauling) = 28k gp.

The construct lives below deck, walks continuously in a circle, and pulls a wheel that spins the propeller with a massive gearing ratio.

Carrying capacity is 4800 pounds (30 base strenth + 8 muleback cord, heavy load) * 6 (huge quadraped) * 3 (Ant Haul) = 43.2 tonnes. It gets 4 Construction Points, spend them all on Faster to boost base speed to 70 ft, reduced to 50 feet due to heavy load.

With reasonable estimations that's ... 650 horsepower? How much are we looking for here?

We want 100 horsepower for every 2 tons to get to 20 mph, which means for a galley with 50 tons dry weight and up to 150 tons of cargo we want 10,000 horsepower.

If we can get it for less than 20,000 gp it'll be cheap enough to reduce shipping costs substantially. If we can get even more power than that we can move ships even faster and so it's worth exponentially more to international trade.

A Campfire Bead can burn for 8 hours a day and costs 720 gp, so 2,160 gp for constant use.

It produces around 5000 horsepower in heat-energy, which makes high-pressure steam if we place it under this airtight watertank I've designed.

The pressure of the steam lifts this piston allowing us to recover 1.5% mechanical efficiency for ~86 horsepower, way cheaper and with less weight than those other people are suggesting.

It's possible to turn pressure into energy?

Buddy just put a Bag of Holding full of water in your tank and repeatedly turn it inside-out to empty it and then outside-in and let it refill with water.

That'd move your piston up and down just fine, right?

That's ...

We're going to have to talk to some expert smiths to see how difficult it is to make a secure pressure vessel, but you're both getting some prizes.

A portable hole is 10 ft deep, and 6 feet across, and anything inside one has no effect on the mass of the ship the hole is on, even though it's still got gravity.

You could put two on opposite sides together like a sandwitch, and put a several-ton weight inside one, and spin the holes together.

When the weights at the top it'll fall down, and you can put it on a steel piston attached to the sandwich and generate ... about 14 horsepower for every 1 ton of mass to drive it.

They costs 20,000 gp each though, so not cheap.

I still think you should be going with the Gargantuan Animated Object here.

Set it up as a big square table, 25 feet to a side, that you can stack up to a hundred tons of goods on with the enchantments.

You can't teleport a gargantuan creature, but there's no reason it can't teleport itself.
Give it Boots of Teleportation and show it on a scry the other warehouse in the destination.

A 10,000 gp galley can make comfortable around 800 gp in trading-profit per trip.
Most of that is spent on costs and wages for crew, but some of which eventually pays off the cost of the ship before it sinks or needs retiring.
You'll need a legendarily powerful caster, and you'd be investing 15k for the permenancy, 3k for the carry-capacity items, and another 50k for the boots but you can sell those again if it doesn't work out.
You'd expect the same 800 gp in trading-profit per trip, 3 trips per day, every day, plus the cost of scrying for it until it knows the destinations and loading and unloading.

It'll pay itself off in ... 40 days?

Wait no not like that how are we supposed to do piracy if you're doing it like that

Is ... is that possible?

Can we find some master Transmuters and Arcane Crafters to tell us if that's possible?

Oh Abadar above please let that be possible

Hey Abadar, I notice You're trying to do an industrial revolution.

Could You maybe Don't?

It'll increase My utility by thiiiiiis much to do an industrial revolution.
Can You stop Me and if not how much would You pay Me to stop Myself?

I don't particularly want to give You more power to optimise Your values, given how opposed they are to Mine.

I'm not certain I can stop You by Myself but I'm certain I can make it way more difficult.

I'm also not alone, there are other gods with interests opposed to Yours.