That would be a good solution. No point in making the engineering more problematic. I still wonder about the torps ability to pierce balsa.
I can see it now, 16 to 20 torps out of control, running in circles, both fleets scattering to the winds, half the fleets sunk due to rams, trying to avoid all the errant torpedoes in the water. Wow, you guys just might get me involved too.
Tugboat, I've looked at putting batteries in 1/4" tubes, and the only batteries I've found that would fit are hearing aid batteries. You may have to hook several in series and parallel to get the voltage/current you need to drive a small pager motor. I've bought some of the batteries, but haven't had time to play with them yet. Carl
I'm not sure how well a torp driven by pager motors will penetrate balsa, but you can check out this pic from the Queen's Own site to see how effective a CO2 launched torp is! Carl
Have you guys considered Propel gas powered torps? I'm very stoked to see others tinkering with idea of a scale, locomotive torpedo. If it can be made to work, I feel it adds a whole other level to the hobby. I'm running the idea over in my head as well, and I'm going with liquified, compressed gas torps. I'm sure small motors and batteries would work as well, but they take up precious weight. The key to making scale "fish" work is to have them be reusable, because they will always be difficult and time consuming to make. The hardest part I think will be making them cause damage. Running at a scale or semi-scale speed they just won't have enough ooomph to just punch a hole... the rod torpedos work because they are heavy. If you crank up the speed too much... ships have no chance of avoiding them. I'm thinking of a mechanical warhead... something that spring the front of the torp open to rip open the hull. I'm imagining a torp with the forward springing open like the petals of flower to rip a large whole in balsa. Would it work? I have no clue... I'm still saving my pennies for a lathe and a mill.
My biggest concern is that torpedoes still be a useful and fun weapon. I don't want to see torpedoes made so weak that they are a liability, or the restrictions on them so high that only a few ships actually get to use them. Personally, I think that a torpedo armament of 3-4 barrels per side, firing one 1/4" ball per barrel, is plenty. Set that as your limit in the rules, and you should be just peachy. One shot will not be a KO (unless your pump fails) but it's not so little firepower that you can't sink a ship if you try hard and shoot well. I'm not SO sure that requiring an identical number of main-battery turrets be armed is a good idea, but requiring at least some gun armament is quite do-able in 1/96 scale. I'm also a little concerned about the idea of limiting historically non-reloading ships to one shot per battle, mostly for the fun factor. If you only have one shot, then the general tendency is to save it and save it and save it, and in the end not get to use it because you were waiting for that "perfect" shot that never appeared. PS: Wow, that's some hefty damage on that American DD! That's the sort of chunking damage that my Spahkreuzer's triple torpedoes would inflict from time to time when loaded with two balls per barrel. I wonder if he survived...
I'm open to the idea, but AAAA batteries are .327" diameter (8.3mm). The closest I got to fitting a AAAA is 10mm tube, or 3/8" tube. Is the body politic willing to allow large diameter powered torps as an alternative to 1/4" cannon-torps?
The whole idea of the original rules was to fire the scale length torpedoes from a scale launcher using rods/tubes for the torpedoes. I'm not that interested in firing 1/4" balls in place of a torpedo, I want to fire a torpedo that actually looks like a torpedo. [] So how about this: if you build scale launchers firing scale length torpedoes, you can arm everything, but can fire them only one tube per second. If you build your launchers use big-gun style 1/4" ball torpedo tubes or big-gun 1/4" turrets, the rules will limit how many barrels per side. Sound good? Thanks, Carl
I would vote against anything larger than 1/4" for the torp diameter. Torps are the one thing we can do truly scale, I'd hate to lose that. Carl
I like that idea, it would reward those who want to keep a scale look of their ship. has anyone tried a spring loaded torp yet? would they deliver enough force at a reasonable distance (6' or so) to penatrate 1/8" balsa?
Mark Bunting has had some success with spring loaded torps. He had a concept work up and it did fairly well against foam... but the rc firing system still needs work. I think the pen was about 1.5 or so, so it could be comparable to co2 designs. Note, this prototye has not been tested underwater to my knowledge. There's been some discussion on the MABG forum, I'm fairly sure Mark will let you know if anything else has been discovered. Mike3
Here are my proposals for torpedo rules. I re-read the discussion, and I tried to find something that would be palatable to everyone. If there are any major issues that anyone has, post them so we can hash it out, these aren't carved in stone yet Here are some proposals I think we can agree on, for starters. -Torpedoes must be fired from scale sized and scale appearing launchers. The actual firing device inside the launcher housing may vary, but it must look reasonably like the prototype (i.e. the launcher on the real ship). -Torpedoes may be propelled using any non-combustible methods.(i.e.- CO2, electricity, and spring power are examples of legal methods). -Captains wishing to arm torpedoes aboard their ship must arm at least half (rounding up) of their main gun turrets. (i.e. if your ship has 5 primary turrets, you'd need to arm at least 3 of them to get torpedoes) **Submarines may arm all torpedo tubes, as they are considered to be the primary battery, with decks guns being the secondary battery. For simplicity's sake, Surcouf is covered under this rule. **Space Cruiser Yamato must arm 2 of the 3 main turrets, and the Wave Motion Gun, if the captain wishes to arm torpedoes. (just kidding, thought I'd see if anyone was still reading)
Now, for what we can use for 'torpedoes'... 1) 1/4" diameter x scale length cylinders, powered or unpowered 2) a pair of 1/4" ball bearings fired together from a single barrel Rate of fire: *The 'basic ammunition capacity' is the number of torpedo tubes the launcher has. (i.e. a quadruple launcher has a basic load of 4 shots) -A launcher that fires a single 'torpedo' at a time can fire one shot per second up to its basic ammunition capacity(whether using a single cannon to simulate multiple tubes, or using multiple single-shot tubes) -A launcher that volleys multiple tubes at once may fire one shot to represent the tubes of their launcher. A twin gun representing a quad launcher may fire two volleys 2 seconds apart. A triple representing a quintuple launcher may fire two volleys, 4 seconds apart. **Note that the rate of fire is per launcher... If you have 2 launchers bearing on your target, each one can fire at the same time, within the rate of fire rules above. Reloading: -Ships that carried reloads may fire again after a 5 minute 'reload period'. The total number of torpedoes fired cannot exceed the number carried on the original ship. The shiplist will be modified to show the 'official' number of torpedoes carried for each class.
Now the sticky stuff... Tube limits. I was initially in favor of tube limits. But, as Mark and Carl pointed out, the beauty of Battlestations is that you can arm everything. I'm okay with almost every ship doing that. For those few that I'm not cool with, I'll just not get on the water with them. So I propose no tube limits.
I'll have to look in Conway's to see how many reloads were carried. I fear that it may not have this information. Should there be a default number of reloads for each ship until research is complete? 1 or 0 seems the best for the default reloads.
I think to avoid problems if there are no sources saying how many reloads (or lack-there-of) a ship carried, the ship sould only be allowed 1 shot per tube. this shouldn't be a problem for destroyers since the extra wieght of reloads makes it allmost impossible to do anyway aside from that the rules as written above I'm good with and they got my vote. P.S. put some pics in the file manager of pump set-up, Iowa frames, future Sumner DD frames, I-401 frames (sorry Tug, these aren't the ones for the plug those will come later and I'm sure you're fairly busy at the moment anyway) and a pic of the I-400 with its brass skeg in place.
Frog, I will reword it so that it says 'one or two ball bearings per shot'. I don't think anyone will be unhappy with that, it's not like you'd be seeking unfair advantage by firing _less_ bearings
