For those guys out there with cruisers, how are you planning on laying out their weapons? Cruisers are among my favorite ships, because I am interested in the history of the ships, and in WW2, cruisers did most of the fighting. My favorite is the USS Salt Lake City (aka Sway Back Maru, The One Ship Fleet, and Queen of the North Pacific among her nicknames) At this moment, I am planning on laying her out with dual sterns tied to separate servos, so pulling the stick to the right will fire the right cannon, and pulling the stick back will fire the left cannon. Pulling it diagonally will fire BOTH cannons. I also want to have a half unit bow gun, just to keep people honest. I don't expect to do much damage with it, but it will give me some options, and always make people think twice about crossing my bow. Another layout could use dual sterns and a half unit haymaker in X turret, which is only possible on the ships with two aft turrets. Some guys want to have a 75 round stern gun and a full unit bow gun. Others with 3.5 unit ships will probably want triple bows or sterns. What is your favorite cruiser, and how would you lay it out? Mike D
Hi Mike, I also am a lover of cruisers and destroyers,however in small gun they're neglected as too small and too few guns to do any damage. Re: Gun setup, not sure of the rule for "Treaty" combat but in small gun I would choose depending on who I was fighting, if there were only BB/BC's on the enemy fleet I would go with dual spurt(torps)guns in the stern and try to get close up and help sink some tonnage,as with a bow/stern or dual sterns all your really going to do is pester the enemy and score no real damage.However if there are small enemy ships I'd go with bow/stern as you'll spend most of your time duelling with them I'd imagine.
If you've got a ship that can mount triple sterns, mount triple sterns. I like the idea of forward guns, but the difference between dual sterns and triple sterns is too great to make me split a half unit gun out for forward use.
Yeah, triple sterns on a cruiser is a nice little bit of firepower. My cruiser, while it has a triple turret aft (the high "x" turret actually, the Pensaola class cruisers oddly had the triple turrets superimposed over dual turrets) is a 3.0 unit ship. Under the treaty rules I can only split my pump unit, so I can do duals and a half unit gun somewhere OR a 75 round stern gun and full unit bow. Under our rule set, a Baltimore armed with triple sterns should be a very very nice little cruiser. Mike D
I thought that the ruling had been determined that we could only split the half unit for the pump on a class 3 cruiser. I think a 125 round gun would be illegal. I'll ask Bob if he can clarify that for me. Mike D
I've really been thinking lately about building a crown colony class light cruiser (probably the HMS Bermuda or HMS Jamaica) with triple half unit sterns, and probably a half unit bow gun. That's an awful lot of firepower to fit into a 2 unit ship, but I think it is feasible. Has anyone ever tried it? Mike D
Hi Mike, From what I had heard on the IRCWCC list awhile back Kevin Plumer(sp?)bought a Fiji class hull from one of the guys up here that built a mold for them. I'm pretty sure at first he was planning on building it with quad 1/2 unit sterns and 1/2 pump.Not sure the exact outcome as I'm up here in Nova Scotia Canada but I seem to remember him posting a message on the list saying that he was a giving up the 4 gun idea because it was just too tight a fit and it made the whole ship very unstable. With that said, he was going for 4 guns whereas you only want 3 so it might work,however you may want to consider just going with 2-25 round and 1-50 round gun to make up your triple sterns and leave out the bow gun. However I think it also depends on how much money one wants to spend on their ship.In this day in age of micro mini electronics if your willing to shell out extra bucks to shrink all the vital equipment(motors,servos,receiver,transmitter,switches and most important battery) then I think it would be no problem to fit in all 4 guns. -SRF PS: Steve Reichenbach(sp?)of MWCI has a picture on his page of a Gato class sub be built for convoy, total allowed weight was something like 2.25 pounds.
I knew that Kevin had built a Fiji, but I didn't know how it turned out. I'm looking at the ship more as an experiment (someone told me I couldn't fit those triple .5 unit sterns in, and I am stubborn!) as opposed to something I really really want to have. I've already got the Salt Lake City as my secondary ship and cruiser, so although I generally like the cruisers (the ships, not the models) better then battleships, it's pretty limited what can be done with them in the hobby. There just aren't many reasons to build cruisers once you already have one; it makes more sense to build different battleships or battlecruisers. After I get my two BCs and my CA back in action, I want to build something small that is easy to travel with. I was thinking about building the Dutch Tromp as my "travelling ship" but I am thinking about doing the "Java" instead. She isn't much bigger, and I have always wanted to do a Java. Beyond that though, there isn't much I can do with a cruiser that the SLC and Java won't be able to do. Triple .5 unit sterns are one of those few things, but its not a pressing desire, since I prefer sidemount slugging to run and gun. Sadly my favorite ships (the cruisers) just can't play that game. Mike D
You are right about cruisers not really being all that effective in the "fast gun" game.That being said, I think if you really get good at doing the run and gun method you can score lots of points for your fleet.2 examples that come to mind from my experience is 1 ship,but 2 different captains.A captain up here built a USS Houston w/bow+stern gun,during either the first or second CANNATS he took only 1 hit above the waterline the whole battle.Later he sold his Houston to another captain,who sank a DKM Bismarck with it in a one vs one battle.He basically just kept getting his stern gun in close on the side of Bismarcks bow and opened it up(In all fairness the Bismarck was originally built in 1994 and only used a small swampy pump as per standard of the time and was never refitted with a bigger battleship type pump) I currently have the DKM Z-31 under construction.I plan on putting a spurt gun on it,the thing that still makes no sense to me is under IRCWCC rules a 1 unit spurt gets 15 rounds a 1/2 unit gets 10 rounds.So if I go with a 1 unit spurt and .5 pump I get 15 rounds.If I put 2, .5 spurts I get 20 rounds.A rule change is needed. Bob Pottle up here has a Russian CL hull mold under construction.He plans on arming it with 4 casemate mounted bow spurt guns.Basically drive up to the enemy and unload. The IRCWCC rules are a little unfair to the 3 unit ships now that they let class 2 and under split their units.Thats what I like about the treaty club,it allows 3 unit ships to split a unit.
On a side note, Joe Kutz a former IRCWCC member from Texas left 1/144 to try and get a 1/96th club called Battlestations going.I was excited about that as 1/96th scale is really the ultimate scale for this game.Destroyers are good size(USS Gearing was like 48" and 9 lbs)Cruisers are the big boys(65-80" and 25-50lbs)and Battleships are still small enough(Yamato was like 108" and 150 lbs a South Dakota was 85" and 100 pounds) to be feasible unlike 1/72. It would have made for some good combat as instead of 0 DD'S, 2 cruisers and 10 battleships fighting it would be more like 4 DD'S,5 cruisers and one battleship(more like real naval battles) However it never really took off as Joe Kutz the driving force had personal problems etc... and lost interest.However there are still a few of us out there building 1/96,I know Tugboat is,I have a 1/96 USS Atlanta from scale shipyard on the shelf in the workshop.
Scott, I have seen Joe Kutz's web page "BATTLE STATIONS", and to be honest it was the insperation that got me into this hobby. BTW the Yamato is 108" long but weighs in at 185lbs (I know because its the ship I'm building. Do you know Joe? Both Tugboat (Clark)and I have discussed taking over the old BattleStations web site, but didn't know how to go about it. There is a growing number of people up here in the New England area that are interested in 1/96 scale, do you think Joe would get back into it, there would be more support, or if not let us take over the web site, build uppon it so we can get a "head start" so to speak?
Hi Mark, I'm kind of hijacking this thread. I don't know Joe personally.He battled for a few years in the IRCWCC in Texas.He got tired of how unrealistic fast gun was.He also didn't like Big Gun as the small ships(cruisers and under)were just too hard to build and fight.That being said he also thought 1/72 was fine for DD's and a few smaller cruisers but Battleships were way too big.So he came up with 1/96 as that was the perfect scale for all ships(and scale shipyard has quite a few hulls),you can pretty much build anything from a mid-size DD/DE/Frigate to the largest Battleship.So he quit battling 1/144 all together and put the Battlestations website up. There were quite a few people interested,I know the captains list is out of date but there were a couple people building ships(Joe had a USS Gearing about 50% done and hull for a Cleaveland class, Steve B from Michigan had a Gearing like 75% done,Another guy from Texas had a IJN Shimakaze that was 50% done and Keenan from Missouri even had a Narwhal class sub that was pretty close to 100% operational and Mike Deskin in Ohio has a Strasbourg that just need guns)there was quite a bit of interest,especially from the 1/144th scale battlers.However a lot of people seemed to be waiting for the club to have it's first battle and get going before they started construction. After a few years and a few attempts at trying to get together for a battle,the members just kinda of drifted off.There is a mailing list that Joe Kutz runs for it(battle@kutz.com)and it used to be quite active,however the last few years there has been almost no traffic,usually just Mike Deskin sending new pics of his Strasbourg or Joe Kutz just seeing if anybody is still building. As far as taking the website over,if theres renewed interest he'd probably update it etc... He used to run the mailing list for IRCWCC and still has his IRCWCC Allied Headquaters homepage up,although its out of date,still has some good pictures.I believe he works with computers for a living. If we could get the club going again I'm sure all the guys with ships and even the lurkers would come back full force.I know the guys with ships actually under construction picked this club and had no interest in building in other scales,so most just put their ships on the shelf rather then spend money to finish them when there was no one to battle. The rules were pretty incomplete but they really wanted to experiment so before they set down rules they were hoping to get together for a big battle over a few days and work out the rules,try them out etc..... Perhaps we could start by getting Justin to set up a forum for 1/96 Battlestations.
Scott, I built a 1/72 G Class DD hull hoping that someone else would start something like that too and we could use them. Doesn't look likely now and it is on the shelf too. Perhaps 1/96 is the way to go. I could be convinced to try anyway. Contact me off-thread if you are interested.
Who is it who makes the Fiji hulls? While I'm not ready to pick up new projects until my current ships are done, it never hurts to be well armed with information. Do you know if he also makes the 6" main turrets? Mike D
Hi Mike, Steve Hill made a mold for the Fiji hulls.I believe thats where Kevin got his.Steve has one built as the HMCS Ontario(ex Minotaur)and another guy up here has one built as the HMS Newfoundland.Not 100% sure about the turret mold,all I can say is they both have turrets on,so I would assume a mold was made. Rob Clarke would know for sure,as would Bob Pottle. SRF PS: Rob Clarke, what is your e-mail address?
