That depends on the ship: how much weight can you fit in, how much available space you have to fit batteries, what sort of capacity you need to drive your electronics and for how long.
Relatively slow US Battleship, you could probably get by on a single 12AH 6V battery. Probably have room for more, but that'd get you through a battle.
Some people might think that 12AH isn't enough... but Brian K ran his Iron Duke for a whole battle on one, with no problems. That's a 26-second battleship with a stinger motor on the pump. I think that we put a lot more battery on our ships than we need. 'Course, it's good ballast, but not really necessary if you're not burning that much juice.
I would run two 12ah's wired in parallel. That is the config that goes in all my ships. You will have enough battery for all day.
Wow. And I ran the Lutzow on a couple of 2.4Ah, as I recall. Of course Big gun does not take so much juice, since the speeds are lower and there are no additional drag props or other induced drag to waste power. But it is a matter of balancing current draw of your particular setup (regardless of format), length of sorties, and the weight limitations of the ship. I have some ships (like Titanic) that need so much ballast that throwing a bunch of big SLAs in there is the easy way to get it to the waterline, and I get power as a free byproduct of the ballast. Others, I use NiMH's, due to space or weight concerns. On Dunk, I use 4 NiiMH 7.2v 3,000 to 4500 mAh standard packs, as I bought these "in bulk" on sale for some other, smaller, ships, and they happen to fit nicely. I am considering some of the newer LiFePo4s for a couple of situations, but they are a bit pricey yet. Bottom line - different ships, different answers. Cheers,
I agree, different needs dictate different solutions. Space and weight was a consideration on the Arizona but in the end it came out right on the number. With extra battery, you have extra power if you run into emergency situations but other than that, you don't have to worry about it all day. When my batteries were new, I could battle four sorties and the batteries would not even take a charge that night...
In my Yamato the batteries are ballast and useful ballast instead of dead weight. I got 4 of the 6v 12amphr SLA connected in pararrell for 6v 48 amps. That allows 6-8 hrs of running without pump on and less with the pump running continuously. The batteries are fairly old and used now so the run time is now 6hrs. Still more than plenty for a day.
I agree that batteries are good ballast. But since I got a smart battery charger that gives me a count of AH charged, I've been tracking how much juice SMS Scharnhorst uses. In the heaviest sortie at the Brouhaha (driving into pileup of battleships just to have fun and get shot at, pumping madly, I used a total of 2060mAH. That's a 26 second cruiser with a half-unit pump, but still, I bought 4AH batteries and worried if I would have enough. Actual data is fairly comforting
