For the armored sloop, I picture that it has copper plating (rather than iron plating). There's some sort of process (which I forget the details of) for applying this, which I vaguely recall makes it bond to the iron nails used to assemble the hull??? The benefits are that the copper plating provides some armoring, and also prevents the build-up of barnacles etc. on the wooden hull (which if allowed to build up, over time slows a ship significantly and interferes with its handling, and requires periodic keel-hauling in the non-person-involved sense to scrape the worst of the barnacles loose).
My source for this is a Devid Weber novel ("Off Armageddon Reef" and its sequels; and Weber's done a fair amount of research for his historic naval combat stuff), but I admit I'd have to go find the novel to answer questions about how hard it is to do, and what mechanical effects it should have.
For the armored sloop, I picture that it has copper plating (rather than iron plating). There's some sort of process (which I forget the details of) for applying this, which I vaguely recall makes it bond to the iron nails used to assemble the hull??? The benefits are that the copper plating provides some armoring, and also prevents the build-up of barnacles etc. on the wooden hull (which if allowed to build up, over time slows a ship significantly and interferes with its handling, and requires periodic keel-hauling in the non-person-involved sense to scrape the worst of the barnacles loose).
My source for this is a Devid Weber novel ("Off Armageddon Reef" and its sequels; and Weber's done a fair amount of research for his historic naval combat stuff), but I admit I'd have to go find the novel to answer questions about how hard it is to do, and what mechanical effects it should have.
On topic... I think it's just cool names. But even pirates could get their hands on larger vessels, if they were lucky, or had good backers (in the case of privateers). And the definitions of a ship varied from country to country, and decade to decade. Plus, just ask Stan of Stan's Used Ship Emporium... sometimes you just gotta make it more appealing.
RPG Superstar Season 9 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2015 Top 32
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I just worked on creating about ten ships for a project my friends and I worked on. The dimensions, speed, and number of guns are a bit off in Ultimate Combat, and I have found most of the Pathfinder ships to be not quite a representation of actual navel vessels. Close, but not accurate.
The ships are mostly from the Age of Sail, so 16th to 19th centuries, but also has ships from a bit before that and some ships inspired by those after that period. I would recommend looking into the ships of that time period though, as those are the most iconic pirate ships.
I am not an expert, but I have spent much time studying navel vessels for the project.
Armored Sloop:
I haven't come across any "armored sloops" but a sloop is a single masted ship with about two sails. It would have something about four cannons with a possibly two or more swivel guns. They were fast a maneuverable, and were able to be in some shallow waters that larger ships couldn't sail in. Armored could refer to the copper plating, which combined with hard wood hulls could deflect light cannon balls, or at least be resistant to it.
(A fun note about copper plating: It was the copper plating on a British ship that foiled the first attempt to sink a ship with a submarine during the Revolutionary War. That's right, the colonies tried to sink a ship with a one man submersible.)
A painting of the British Dart, a privateer sloop.
A Brigantine originally referred to a ship sailed by brigands and pirates. It has both sails and oars, two masts, and forward mast is square rigged. In terms of guns, they would have about 15 or 20. I was finding their lengths were varied, but seemed to be somewhere between 60 ft. - 100 ft. with widths (beams) of about 20 feet.
A Brig might refer to a Brigantine, but it also is a type of similar ship. It is a larger ship, of about 75 ft. to 165 ft. long. The masts were roughly the same, with two masts and the forward mast square rigged. There might have been more guns as well, but I can't find that information.
A sloop-of-war is somewhat of a broad category of British navel vessels. It caught a good amount of the unrated ships but was mostly ships with a single gun deck that had about 18 guns. The majority of ships in the British Navy appeared to be of this classification, but it was also a catch-all classification. They were larger than normal sloops and more common brigantines. The brig mentioned above would fall under this type of classification.
Sloops-of-war could be two or three masted, and I have found most lengths were around 100 feet.
HMS Resolution, captained by Captain James Cook
The USS Independence
Yes, I used Google and Wikipedia, but most of the searching was done months ago.
A fun note, a larger ship, like the Queen Anne's Revenge would be classified as a frigate. A frigate would have been built for speed and had three masts. I found the number of guns on a frigate ranged from 28 to 36.
There were super-frigates as well, which were rated for 44 guns but carried up to 60, and 74s, which were larger super-frigates with (you guessed it,) 74 guns.
None of these compared to the Ships-of-the-Line, which were gigantic warships with as many as 130 guns. The largest I could find was over 200 feet long and had 120 guns on three decks. These wouldn't chase down other ships, but they would instead form a line of similar ships and fire into the enemy navy.
<----Not an Expert!
<----Does know a little bit.
Ships of the Royal Navy were given a "Rate" based on the number of cannon they possessed. A "Ship-of-the-Line" was a massive ship (with two or three decks of 70-100+ guns (some "Third Rates" had as few as 68, some "First Rates" had as many as 118). A "Frigate" was a smaller ship ("Fourth-Sixth Rate") with fewer guns on one or two decks, usually 30-60. After that, the ratings, classifications, and particularly names of ships gets very murky. Ships are called one thing if they have three masts or two, flushed deck or tiered, ship-rigged or lateen-rigged or boat-rigged, etc. None of the classifications seem uniform either. It's pretty interchangeable.
Corvette - A ship of war with 20 guns or so on a single deck (this was a French concept, the British Navy called these sloops, though the biggest may have qualified as the lowest rated frigates).
Sloop or Sloop-of-War - These are interchangeable when referring to an armed or military vessel
Brig or Brig-of-War - Same
Cutter - This seems to refer to the smallest possible armed ship that isn't just a boat with a gun mounted on it.
Funny thing I was just watching a special on the Revolutionary War. Appearently they developed a submarine called the turtle. The intent was to go under the British ships, drill into them and plant explosives. However thier drill could not get through the copper plating that the British lined thier boats with (Guess wood was on the outside).
I was in the navy for 10 years and I learned everything I know about sailing ships from Sid Meier's Pirates.
I am an expert in naval affairs because I have logged more than 100 hours playing Sid Meier's Pirates, Uncharted Waters, all four Pirates of the Caribbean movies, and the first hour of Master and Commander. That makes me an expert. Here's a barquentine.
I'm sitting in my bunk on a replica 17th-century three-master right now. Don't get me started on fantasy RPG maps of ships' internal layouts. :)