Ahoy folks! Many ships in the hobby have asymmetrical turning performance. Despite our best engineering, ships with an odd number of propellers will always turn better in one direction than the other. Most notorious are single-prop ships such as Bismark, Scharnhorst, and Deutschland, but there are plenty of other examples. I'm not asking about how to reduce this effect. I'm asking how to take advantage of it. If you have a single-prop ship that turns better in one direction than the other, which sidemounts do you find most effective, and why?
Aft sidemount on the side you ship pulls towards in reverse. This lets you back down and close the gap at the same time to get within range. I haven't noticed a huge difference in fwd turning, there probably is one but its small enough not to be a big deal, on the Bis the rudders are trimmed to drive straight at neutral stick and then they fully barn door over when turning in either direction. (they could turn further but are endpoint limited in the radio and would hit the prop if they did.)
That must be the dual rudders vs one rudder thing. My Deutschland tracks straight just fine, but has noticeably different turning in each direction. One direction is a smaller turning radius, but more speed loss. The other direction retains more speed, but has a larger turning radius. I'll probably point my sidemount in the direction of the smaller turning radius. Retaining speed would be nice, but at 28 seconds I'm already not catching up with anyone.
What Bob & Chris said, if your ship turns to the left better, put your bow sidemount left, stern right, that way, you benefit from the turn in forward, and from the torque steer in reverse. If you prefer the opposite, swap your prop.
