So I was considering to build a ship, and I'm a stickler for good looking, well maintained ships (I'm almost a Royal Navy XO!), and I was worried that after a couple battles the ships will start to look terrible, and that will bother me. Also, I hate when the turrets are much higher than the deck, and when superstructure are mounted really weird. So are there any ways to make a warship look good?
3d printed parts holds up pretty well and you can add a lot of detail. If they take severe damaged you can print another part.
Time, effort, and regular cosmetic drydockings. Funnels..lots of them 4 at the very least but 5 or 6 is even better!
Yeah, but watch some of the RC Warship Combat videos released by NTXBG, and look at their Iowa and some other ships. Those turrets rise to a height equal to the bridge.
Seeing as no one got that Royal Navy XO joke, before the World Wars, XOs were promoted to COs depending on how handsome and good looking their ships were. Due to this fact, the XOs despised firing exercises, since as soon as the big guns were fired, the paint was ruined. (Yes I know, firing the big guns were the reason they built the ships) This lead to the horrible accuracy of British warships in the beginning of the First World War. Because accuracy was dreadful, the Royal Navy decided to focus on rate of fire. But to fire faster, some shortcuts need to be taken, and one of those shortcuts was to leave flash doors in the gun turrets open, and as shown at Jutland, that left the magazines of a ship vulnerable, and the Queen Mary, the Invincible, and the Indefagitable.
Yea, but some of those videos are 10 years old. Look in the media section at some the ships there, they are more realistic.
BigGun ships have some size issues, namely, their gun assemblies are huge and can't get out of their own way, which leads to the 'turret covers worn as jaunty hats' effect, or if not that, the enormously oversize turret covers that look more like moving boxes. Some builders and cannon assemblies seem to be less prone to the problem. Its pretty inevitable though that unless you're patching up superstructures and replacing parts after every battle that things are going to start to get a bit ragged.
Those are big gun ships and as stated they have some issues fitting their armament into the space. Build as pretty as you want. I've built gorgeous ships and bare minimalist ships, it depends on the ship and my mood. There will always be something uglier than your boat out there. Most clubs are more about combat than scale. If scale is your thing, build a scale ship no worries, but if it shoots...its gonna get beat up a little.
Fighting no major battles after Trafalgar and with almost 100 years of "peace-time navy" will do that. On the other hand the ships did look splendid!
Yeah, but then again, the Royal Navy did have a point. Before the First World War all they did was drive around showing off their capital ships, so they did need to look sharp.
