Thinking of dusting off the Stynger production line. For some odd reason, I used to enjoy building cannons.
I cheated and got here when lipos and solenoids were already standard. Then 3D boats came alongide during my rookie years. So my perspective is different. That said, from what I've seen, heard, and learnt is that this hobby is in a constant state of evolution. But that evolution seems to have gone from linear/geometric to more exponential recently. Fast change/growth has pros and cons. The changes needed to campaign are an example of con IMO. The players and their skills have outgrown it but the rules are still the same. all that said, I just like having fun playing with pew pew boats. Happy to be here as always.
I think there are some huge steps in this hobby. Batteries Reliability of electronics 3-D printing Looks like you came into the hobby when we VOTED the night before NATS if we would have a campaign at that NATS. I fought HARD to have that rule changed. Why should people build and bring campaign boats if it did not happen. We now have people building AIRCRAFT CARRIERS and other boats. I do enjoy seeing many different boats on the water. Our rule set now is a bit bifurcated from some others I have seen. But recently some members beach there combat boats to run convoy.
I don't ever want someone to measure the accuracy of my scale items not related to combat. That's the last detail I care about. I will make sure I build a boat to the correct battle specs, I will do my best to keep things scale appropriate, and I agree you should be able to identify the silhouette. But I like to get creative with the deck decor, within reason, and would not want to be penalized for something so trivial. If the SS and deck decor do not alter the function of the boat and there are zero points for SS hits I'm more worried about a working float than the right AA turret. That said dont mean to be snarky, we all enjoy this for different reasons. Which in itself is one of the best things about the hobby. We all bring unique perspectives to the art of pew pew on the water. I totally support those who are here to build gorgeous replicas. I will drool at it just as much as the next fella. There should continue to be recognition and awards for great and accurate design. Maybe one day I'll get the engineering mastered and I'll move my concern up to the 01 levels and above.
Yes the hobby has become more competitive, it has lost some of the "scale model" aspect which was more pronounced in the past. If that's a bad thing or not depends a lot on how you view the hobby and what you like to do. If the hobby is too competitive that's on US, we're to blame and the ones that can fix it, technology is just a tool our monkey brains can use to bend the world to our whims. I don't think the hobby is all that different than it was 20+ years ago from a technical point of view, the technical progression in the hobby is peanuts compared to the world around it. Sure some of the tech in the ships looks different but it's basically the same from a competitive standpoint with one major exception. Batteries (as others have said) are the largest technological difference over that time frame that directly impact competition. Not having voltage drop off like you'd see with SLAs at the end of a battle is huge, and being able to carry a lot more power into battle means you can use it somewhere and really the only meaningful place to do that is with your pump(s), running 2 high end pumps on SLAs for an entire battle isn't nearly as easy as doing it on current batteries. They also allow smaller boats to be more accessible but smaller boats tend to be less competitive too but if it gets/keeps people in the hobby that's great. Reliability, quality of life, and ease of building have all gotten way better, often helped along by technology. A massive part of that is the improvements in communication and sharing information/knowledge which makes it easier to get and keep a working ship on the water. Also access to quality parts and supplies is way higher now than it used to be, not just on boat specific stuff. I can order stuff in whatever quantity I need straight from the factory and it arrives in days from all over the world, if it's common enough I can get it on my doorstep same or next day. I can get custom parts made to high quality at reasonably affordable prices out of 100's of different materials, and a ton of manufacturing technologies to meet whatever I need. I think it is awesome. All that leads to reliability which makes for a more competitive hobby but going to events and being disappointment that people didn't get to play because their stuff wasn't working sucks, that was a lot less fun than battles where everyone's stuff worked. It's really hard to be competitive if your ship doesn't work. Reliability won battles/NATS, if you could sink some people early in the week and then they would start having problems with their gear and miss battles it snowballs. That's one of the reasons NATS can get pretty lopsided. With a reliable boat they come right back out swinging and it's not as easy. More reliability leads to more time on the water battling (aka more practice) so it just makes sense people would get better at battling and that raises the skill level across the hobby. Pump outlets, Rudders, Props, Guns, Pumps, Motors, etc have all gotten better over the years but not by that much in terms of actual function, enough to make a difference in some cases but much more evolutionary than revolutionary. I don't think that modern tech is ruining the hobby, or making it less fun. I do think it's helped to get us a lot of what we've been saying we wanted for years and years. Easier to build ships that are more reliable. As for the rules and the future yeah I personally think there are some dumb ones that should be different, but that's not new and isn't going to change, the fun of the hobby outweighs that significantly and everyone has aspects of stuff they don't like. Not a big deal. I love/hate the discord. It's great for some stuff like getting real time answers or hanging out/seeing what people are up too but the forums are way better as a knowledge base which is a great resource to have. It's good to have both. I don't see the technology advancing that rapidly either, how long did it take to get people off of poppets, or to use ESCs. Real advances tend to take a lot of time and money, it's a really small hobby and there just aren't that many people working on doing that sort of thing. Also the rules process disincentivizes revolutionary advances, why spend tons of time and money working on some advanced concept that I might get to use for a year at most before it gets banned if it's too good?
I think you bring up a great point with the discord and forum. The forum is a knowledgebase, the discord is a good place for rapid discussion/questions and answers, hang outs, etc. Someone reads a 15 year old thread on the forum and then hopefully asks in the discord: "Hey, is it still a good idea to use this polyurethane concrete driveway stuff I read about in this thread from 2009?" To which point we can all respond very loudly "NO! PLEASE GOD!" Kinda a checks and balances thing, imo.
I like the idea of forming a collection of modern videos and techniques. I think there is room for that on the wiki idea I had to make a history of all our boats.
My first two ships California and Bismarck both used SLA batteries and servos in a watertight box to depress micro switches for throttle,pump and guns. That in itself was a lot of work to just set all that up in a box. This was around 2007-2009, things were so much harder then. The new batteries and awesome esc’s we have now have for sure made life way easier and boats more reliable than in the past. Like what, I can now go to the pond and charge my batteries in 30 minutes and have juice for the whole battle instead of charging my sla’s all night long with a car charger and then they still suck and die. The better tech is the only reason I’m still around, it’s made the hobby way more enjoyable battling wise.
