Hi All, I've seen many new people enrolling in this site, and often they want to dive into shipbuilding right away. Which is great! But..... here's some good advice on how to get started successfully in this hobby. 1) Post an introduction in the appropriate section of this site, including what city / state / country you are located in. I'd estimate at least 75% of the people who successfully get a boat on the water did so because they were able to find a coach / mentor in their area to help them out. Not that it's impossible if you live in Siberia, just will be tougher if all your coaching is done long distance. 2) Determine if there is an active club in your area, and if so, what rule-set they use. R/C Naval Combat is essentially divided up into two major "branches" and a few different "twigs" off those. Big Gun Combat - Ships use various sized guns firing up to .25" ball bearings(!!). Small Gun Combat - Ships use bb-guns (.177"). This is further divided into: "Fast Gun" - Model Warship Combat (MWC) and International Radio Controlled Warship Combat Club (IRCWCC). 1:144 scale, ships fire and move faster than scale speeds "Treaty" - 1:144 scale that fire at 2 shots per minute & have scale speeds There are other variants out there, 1:96 scale, Age of Sail, "Steampunk". All are fairly small and geographically limited for now If there's a club in your area, go see a battle and see if it appeals to you. If that rule set's not your cup o' tea, no worries, the various clubs are always looking for new members and most are willing to try other rules. Once you get that settled, THEN it's time to decide on a ship to build. Good luck & I'll see you on the water!
Fast Gun and Treaty both use scale speeds, they just use different scales. Fast Gun uses a fluid dynamics based system which results in similar hydrodynamic performance to the original vessel, as well as a tiered grouping system to better differentiate speeds for game play. Treaty uses an arbitrary linear-ish scale such that ship speeds are relative to each other. Both systems work, neither is really right or wrong as it just depends what you want the end result to be.
Both are still in early stages of being fleshed out, with AoS having been talked about for longer. Steampunk thread: http://rcnavalcombat.com/Forum/tabi...fault.aspx AoS Forum: http://rcnavalcombat.com/Forum/tabi...fault.aspx
You beat me to it, Nick. But I'll post what I had written up anyway. Aos is a newer format where people build 1/48 scale ships of the Napoleonic Era. It's pretty cool, check out the Aos section down it the "Organizations" list. Steampunk is a super new format that is still on the drawing board. The format concentrates on the Victorian Era where steam power was just coming into use. There are three different classes of ships, battleships, armored cruisers, and protected cruisers. Each class has a stock under-the-waterline that you build the above-the-waterline hull on top of. You can scale plans to fit the hull and build a ship that existed, or you can build something that looks like something of the time period. It totally up to the builder.
