I like the idea, but I think it's best we wait until we've had a few battles before considering implementing it. The Age of Sail is already a more complex challenge than either a Big Gun or Fast Gun ship. The biggest sail-powered ships under construction right now carry 50% more firepower than the Yamato-class battleship, which is already considered a complex and expensive ship to build. I think it's best we get a more realistic appraisal of the challenges of building a sail-powered warship before increasing their armament further.
My current armament plan for Minerva is 5 guns in each broadside and 2 chasers forward, all at a 4-sec rate of fire.
I wanted to arm my chase cannons at a lower pressure and use #12 ratshot to hit sails and rigging, like their original intention. Fine on a private pond with a friend I guess.
That sounds like a lot of repair work on hand-made sails. Of course, if you were to do that, you probably wouldn't make a set of camber boards and sew nice sails for your ships
Nope! I was thinking white platic with heat sealed top and bottom for spars to pass through. Sort of the difference between fast gun simple superstructure and big gun beauty models.
As you guys probably already know, I have never used a Fast-Gun-style cannon in action. I've heard that they are more efficient than Big Gun cannons, but I don't have any experience estimating how much CO2 I'll need for a given amount of guns. So how big of a bottle should I plan on for Constitution with her 12 guns? I could fit in a 24-oz bottle if necessary but I'd prefer something smaller...
Generally, you can expect 50 - 60 shots from one ounce of CO2 in an average fast gun cannon. Some designs more more efficient such as Mark Jenks amazing 100+ shots per 12 gram negative pressure cannon. Others are less so such as the high flow rapid fire cannons I make (45 shots per ounce). 50 - 60 shots per cannon per ounce of CO2 is good to start from.
As far as the cannons facing directly (90 degree) from the hull sides, The guns (of the real ships) can be turned in a arc so that in a chase situation, one could turn the chase boat off course to one side or the other to unleash a nearly full broad side at the chased ship, then turn back to the chase course.
