So I'm wanting to do something so I can ID my side mount guns on my Australia. Right now I was thinking of just painting a quick and simple circle on the tops of the turret, red on the port and green on starboard. Then add a tdot on the transmitter to correspond to them,l. I think that would make them easy enough for me to know which gun I need to fire, instead of guessing. Any constructive criticisms on this idea? This is until I learn the ship and learn to battle well enough to be able to remove the handicap.
Practice so it just becomes natural, it doesn't take that long. If you want to put something on the radio make it tactile or arrange the buttons in a way that make sense to you. The button on the left fires the gun on the left, etc etc, is pretty normal and easy to get the hang of. There really isn't enough time to keep looking back and forth between your boat and your radio in battle to find the right button. You'll miss your shot, end up in a bad situation, ram someone, etc.
This, so much this. You can even practice dry. Take your radio in hand, watch a video or close your eyes and imagine a ship, then practice moving the stick/pressing the buttons as appropriate. You can verbalize if you want: left left left stern stern stern left left right right right runaway oh shit sunk.
Really, just battle the boat. It's not rocket surgery. You will figure it out. If I can, you can. And you'll think you've got it down and then you'll plug the left front sidemount into the right rear sidemount gunboard and it'll be all wambulated for a sortie.
I know on my transmitter that left is port, and right is starboard. It's when the boat is out on the water and turning around and such that I just don't have the grasp of which side it which at that point. Especially when the boat is perpendicular to me (so traveling left/right). Heh, if it wasnt for the rudders and turret caps having it written on them, I wouldn't know. I was just looking for a cheap way to make it so when I forget, I know which one I need to fire and not fire the wrong side. I'm hoping it's only a few battles that I need something like that. Its keeping track of the orientation of the boat while also trying to focus on driving, shooting, and all the other ships out on the pond. If I eliminated for now keeping track of which side is which, I'm goping to speed up knowing how to maneuver to get hits. Right now I'm a floating mess out there, lol.
I'll be there Saturday. and Sunday if the wife allows it. But this next one is the first full battle this season with the Australia. And I was at the speed trials with the Australia too. I still have to patch those holes :/ but that should be all that's left when I get home tomorrow, as I brought some stuff for me to work on here at work.
If you know where you're going, you know which side is which and which end is which. You can't focus on shooting if you don't know already know your orientation, and where the other ships are is useless if you don't know your orientation. You're really overcomplicating this, get some stick time on the water, worry more about your driving and less about your shooting for now.
There are guys who have been doing this for years who line up next to someone and accidentally rip with the wrong gun. You'll figure it out with stick time on the water like Nick says above.
I still remember the first combat I fought with an armed ship. I took a big gun cruiser armed with torpedoes, and found a pocket battleship that had just launched. I don't think he really cared about my twin torpedoes, but I was shaking. I pulled up alongside and BLAM BLAM fired both sides. After that, I was able to relax and focus a bit more. Especially with torpedo cruisers, it was easy to focus on aiming the one shot you had on each side, but if you shot the wrong side it was a whole approach and torpedo run wasted. There's a reason the Navy runs drills (fire, flooding, scram, etc), so you can practice the motions. When it actually happens for real, you fall back on the practice. Most people aren't able to put in time practicing actual combat, so you just have to get in and learn the hard way. I've found that after a decade of being away from the hobby and having swapped from big gun to fast gun, all my previous combat experience needs to be overwritten with new battle experience. I had many rams the first time out with the Schleswig-Holstein, none the second time. I still have a tendency to fire when I don't have a good shot. Also, I will often perform a panicked turn to escape an enemy which reduces the effectiveness of my return fire ( I shoot back, but without checking to make sure I have the right range and sometimes for longer than needed, so many shots miss). Reviewing the battle camera of just one sortie last weekend revealed a lot, and becoming aware of a problem is the first step to overcoming it and getting better. It doesn't always happen, but I've sometimes seen experienced captains team up with a new captain to help them learn the basics. Whether its someone without a boat talking you through the battle, a person with a boat acting as a wingman (or you're the wingman) guiding you in to situations where you can succeed, or even a person on the other team who's willing to tango at your level so you can learn the basics of combat (sometimes giving you shots, sometimes inflicting some pain). Long story short, go to a battle and fight. Don't worry about it too much in the beginning, you'll get better. Even recovering from a sink is a skill, so no matter what happens you're always learning!
One of my troubles was having the starboard sidemount on the bow, and the port sidemount on the stern. took a while to get that down every time, and my bow sidemount got me into trouble way more often than it was useful (RE: CHASING CRAIG'S BADEN IS A BAD IDEA), so I put both sidemounts in the stern with pretty similar aiming points and built a modified Brawler. I run firing drills on the lake quite often, so hopefully I'll stand a chance this season. I'll be seeing you out in Saranac a lot this summer, so if you find yourself on the opposing team, don't be ashamed to surf the minor leagues and pester me. We can be incompetent together!
