Actually, some of the older monitors also carried 18" guns, but that wasn't my point. My point was the 5/16" inch turret (a triple turret) would only be good on the Yamato class. I doubt someone like BDE would want to sell 5/16" triple turrets when only one ship class in one scale could use them. And at roughly $175 a turret from BDE, I don't think many people would want to spend that much money on something that can only used in one ship. However, it sounds like ya'all are building your own guns for the Yamato, so the point maybe moot. Anyways, I'm OK with trying it and seeing how it works. But I would suggest changing the rule slightly so that the Yamato class could use either 5/16" guns or 1/4" guns (all or nothing, no mixing of "calibers"), captain's choice. That way I'm not forced by the rules to use 5/16" on Yamato, and I can buy 1/4" turrets I can re-use on another ship later. Carl
I agree on the convoy ship pump issue, but are we going to include the purpose-built commerce raiders in that category? The german ones I'm thinking of were subsidized by the Kreigsmarine pre-war, and were built with military specs... Just a thought. As far as the speed chart and rules, I'll talk to Justin and see if I can get permissions on this forum to make a "sticky" topic (so it stays at the top of the list) for the rules, and another one for the speed chart. That way anyone wanting a reference can find it easily.
Carl, Thats kind of what I intended to do fo the Yamato. The guns I did order from BDE and he'll make them for 5/16" but not the barrles, those I have to make myself. If the 5/16" doesn't work out I'll just switch the barrles back to 1/4" and put brass spacers where needed in the firing mech. so if someone else is thinking about a Yamato class and doesn't want to deal with 5/16" thats fine, just go with the 1/4". to begin with thats what I'll be using.
I hate to come back to torpedoes but.... There are ships that had fixed torpedo tubes exiting through the hull, rather than rotating mounts on the deck. Some, such as HMS Nelson, had the tubes facing forward, some such as IJN Furataka had them facing at 90deg to the keel. Some (such as the Nelson) had them under the waterline, some had them above. Any idea how to accommodate these kinds of mounts? A solid area where they exit the hull? Also...... If you are having submarines with penetrable decks, have you given any thought to allowing ships to have 'depth charges'? A cannon mounted in the bottom of the boat firing directly down?
I believe the current draw rule was imposed to prevent people with more money from hopping-up the pump with a mega-buck motor to gain a small advantage. It is almost inevitable that things will evolve that way. Perhaps a maximum discharge rate is the way to go and remove all other restrictions on the pump -- as long as the pump doesn't exceed the max rate, then who cares how it works? Anyway, I am just throwing out ideas.
Re: Convoy pump rate Thats a good question,not that many people will be rushing to build those types of boats.I would like to one day build a HMCS Prince Robert.The Prince class ships were 3 canadian "liners"(only 385' long,22kts)that were taken over at the start of WW2 and coverted to AMC's(4-6"guns)then LCI(4-4"guns)and Prince Robert of that class was converted into an AA escort(10-4")Now I know AMC's were basically merchant ships with guns,however I read somewhere that most had their holds filled with empty sealed 55g drums to help with damage control.I believe theres an article out there that talks about how when the Scheer was pummeling the Jervis Bay the empty drums were spilling out of the holes in the hull. I think it would just be easier to say AMC/Merchant Raiders get convoy ratings(which pretty much means most will get 1/4)and 1/4 is equal to a warship from 0-2500 tons.Or if thats unfair we could also just cap it and say all AMC/Merchant Raiders get 1/2 pump regardless of size/weight.
Rob, I know in the old sub rules if you had to have a hard point to attach equipment too, like you were installing a deck gun,you were allowed 3/16" hard area all around the protusion(www.battlestations.org)So something like that might work in this case. Your correct about the pumps.There is a rule in MWCI Fast Gun(Section G,Rule 3, www.mwci.org) saying that your pump motor could be no larger then your largest drive motor.So people were using the cheap motors for propulsion then basically buying high powered racing motors of the same size for their pumps.If you read the IRCWCC rules(www.ircwcc.com)they removed that rule because of people buying the mega buck high performance motor.That way they could have a small size cheap motor for drive and buy a big cheap motor for pump.
I'm thinking similarly to Scott on the underwater torpedo tubes issue... Suggestion: If a torpedo tube is less than 1" below the waterline, it gets 3/16" of solid area around where it penetrates the hull. If a torpedo tube is 1" or more below the waterline, it is already in legal solid area. For tubes right on or just above/below the "1 inch below" line, the area 3/16" radius around the muzzle can be solid. *This is just a suggestion, please give me feedback so that we all get input While I am fully in favor of arming these tubes (heck yeah!), remember that no weapons can be mounted with an up-angle... i.e. they must fire horizontally, or down a few degrees. Safety first, and all that. Trust me, I like the idea (I have plans for SMS Freidrich der Grosse), but I don't want torpedoes flying up out of the water
I'm flexible on the pumps issue... whatever you guys want is what I'll put in the rules. Robert, we eliminated the penetrable decks rule on subs. They're hard enough to build and operate, and really to aim and fire, you'd have to surface anyhow. There were some posts in this thread above about fast guns sub ops being crazy hard At last Nats, we couldn't find one sub till the next day... One of the scuba guys finally found it, 20 feet from where it was last seen I agree with you (Robert) about just measuring pump output and disregarding the method or current draw. It's easy to check and leaves more room for ingenuity on the part of the builders. In fact, I like it better than regulating orifice size (daang, I'm a geek). All in favor say aye
One more post before I yield the floor to saner heads... I forgot to touch on the minimum speed proposal. I am fully in favor of a minimum speed cap, say 20kts for convoys and 24kts for warships?
Hi guys, Good point Tugboat,if the underwater torp is too far down on the hull it might go right under the other ship or just hit the hard hull under the penetrable windows.I'm ok with whatever you guys want to do, 3/16" seems ok however if somebody wants a little bit more/less I'm ok with that. The one good point about going with a set flow rate for pumps is we can eliminate the 1/4, 1/2, 1 etc... ranking.The one thing I didn't like about the ranking system was for example if your ship got 1 and 3/4 you had to have 3 pumps to use all your ranking up(1,1/2 and 1/4)whereas a ship that got 2 could just have 2 pumps.This way a 60 gph boat could have any number of pumps depending on wether the captain wanted just 1, or 2,or 3 etc....
Hi Mark, I don't know how much experience you have in RC combat but speed does play quite a big factor in combat.Granted in Fast Gun speed and agility are way more important as most sidemounts are ranged from 6"-18" so you need to be able get close and get your guns on target. With Big Gun your main guns(normally) rotate and depress so speed isn't as big a factor,it's more used to either help you pick where the fight is going to occur or it's used to run away from the fight. A few years ago there were all kinds of Big Gun combat sites up.You could pretty much follow each club by their webpage and battle reports to the Big Gun list.A few of the really good ones(SCBG and MWBG)have disappeared,or been replaced by simple sites with no pictures etc.....,anyways,there was one guy,Tim M from the MWBG that built an HMS Roberts from one of Bob Pottles hulls.He armed it with just the bow dual main guns,no secondaries.Now Roberts could only make about 12kts(+/-)in real life but in Big Gun it got 24kts.Even though he was by far the slowest ship on the water he was basically invincible,the Roberts was so agile and hard to hit(being so small,something like 31"?).He couldn't catch the other boats so he'd basically just cruise around and got really good at hitting ships from 10-15 feet away,never taking any damage in return.One battle a Scharnhorst decided to have a go at him and ended up getting pummelled and sunk with only light damage to the Roberts.He basically retired it after that as nobody would go within 20 feet of him. I'm not to worried about warship speed being too slow,as the above story illustrates. However my concern was if we don't have some kind of cap for merchant ships then we may only see lots of a certain type on the water(ie: fast ones)and all the usual suspects like tankers,liberties etc... won't get battled. I was thinking instead of a minimum for convoy and warship we could just have one.Say 20 knots, as the slowest speed allowed.
I agree, I happen to like a lot of the old pre-dreadnoughts which almost always have a max speed of around 18kts. Even the first dreadnoughts were almost all 21kts or lower. These are all practical ships to build (if anything like this can be said to be practical) as they are all shorter than the average WWII cruiser. The early battlercruisers made huge compromises in armour in order to gain a few knots of speed. Speed matters.... So...if you are going to have a minimum speed, make it fairly low.
A minimum speed cap does NOT rule out slow ships, it means that ships that are slower than the limit can go that fast, even though in real life they were slower. Ex: Predreadnought HMS Inedible made 17kts in trials in 1901. Effluvio Schmuckatelli my neighbor builds one. It is allowed to go 20 kts, not 17kts, so Effluvio can chase down convoy ships At least a few of them. The idea of the minimum speed rule is to help out the really slow ships, not ban them.
I was just trying to make the point that if the minimum speed was too high then 'reality' would be distorted. If the mimium speed is too high (say 24 kts), then a ~450ft Viribus Unitas with 12 x 12in and 8in of armour would be just a little slower than a 600+ft Graf Spee cruiser (28kts) with 6 x 11 and 3in of Armour. 20 kts is low enough to minimize this. I doubt very many people have an interest in these old ships anyway.
I like 20kts, good round number, and also for the reason that you gave. Mark, is this ok with you, or no? And Robert, I have an interest in old ships, just need time to build all the ones I want to. The DN Hyuga is cool, I thought about building it as the BBCV it became, weathering it appropriately, and painting the japanese letters for "Galactica" on the side of the superstructure
Yes, sorry to get everyone confused. I just assumed everyone knew what I was talking about. With warships it's not really a big deal if you go 30 knots of 15 knots, because if you have 7/32 or 1/4 main guns your going to be able to reach out and touch from a long distance. I was just concerned that since merchant boats really only have 2 advantages in this game(Size and Speed) nobody will want to build an average sized, 14-16 knot Tanker or Liberty/Cargo/Troop ship when they can build a a very small and fast converted DD (APD) or a huge and very fast(30+kts) ocean liner.
