Wouldn't that just be an advantage inherently designed into the ship 100 years ago just as hull design affects speed and maneuvering and therfore the ability to score points in other ships?
Also given my case mates are above the deck how does that differ from superstructure on another ship?
Simple. The way the rules are written yours are declared to be part of the hull (and below what the rules consider 'the deck'). The casemate rules are a bit unpleasant to the German dreadnoughts as the Kaiser, Koenig and Bayern classes were all built with raised forecastles extending back into superstructure with the first level containing casemates. The best hope for some sanity being granted to all this is for someone to draft a rule proposal that exempts those 3 classes, and manage to get it onto the ballot next year and passed so that in 2017 german superstructures are not conscripted into the ranks of hulls.
I agree. Thinking about my time working on the Texas in houston, in her current configuration she has pedastal mounted guns above her hull that were placed after her case mates were sealed. It seems unlikely a texas would have parts of the superstructure made penetratable. It doesn't seem to make much sense for the rules to consider the deck a raise focsle when that deck doesn't reach the full width of the hull for 80 percent on the length. How did this rule even come up?
IMO you need to drop any thought that fullscale features or the way they did things 100 years ago equates to how things are done in fastgun. For example, back in the day you would never see a dreadnought anywhere near a WW2 fast battleship. The rules do their best to be inclusive of a wide range of designs and try to impose some parity. As to your Konig, if it were me, I'd build out the casemate sections to be penetrable for those sections within the 1/2" zone (measured from the gunwale) for the whole length. Pretty much like what I'm doing with my Barham project. In the grand scheme of things, a few holes in your casemates won't effect fleet scoring all that much and if your boat sinks to that level your going down anyway.
That may be why you voted for the rule.. it is NOT why it was conceived. The IRC took the rule verbatim from the MWC and voted it in, perhaps assuming proper research was conducted.. I don't know. Just because a boat has a casement DOES NOT mean it has an advantage. Only ships in which the casements were built below the gunwale gave any advantage over another ship. (not the dreamt up definition of a gunwale in the rule.. which goes against all known maritime logic). My 'acid' test is.. if you remove that casement (forecastle deck was shortened, welded over the cupola, removed the cupola), what do you have? If the answer is hull.. then it is an advantage and should be penetrable. If the answer is anything other than 'hull' then it would be a superstructure area and as such does NOT provide an advantage.... and shouldn't be penetrable. The VDT, Pommern, Moltke, and a few other classes of ships are ideal examples of gaining hard area where penetrable area should be. The Pommern had large casements mounted to the side of the hull.. BELOW the gunwale... Grey area would be like on the QE, Derflinger or a few others where the casements actually merged with the hulls gunwale in small specific areas but not for the length of the hull. Ships like the Baden and Konig had casements but they were mounted isolated and set back off the gunwale, never merging with the hull nor being integrated as part of the hull. 3 casement scenarios but the rule was designed as though all casement ships were built like the VDT or Pommern. Not right, not fair, not reasonable. However that is the current rule set we have to work with...whimsical as it may be.
The old casement rules sucked, too short, no pictures, no definitions and always lead to arguments over what was right and what was not. One year we had four ships of the same kind show up with four different ways they had cut out their ships. You would think one is right and the other three wrong, but no one could claim any were right or wrong. The new set of rules is much better than the old rules. I built a Kongo that had the same kind of fiberglass hull issue this builder has, the hull ends below the casements, need to add wood decks to make the casements. Was not hard to get it finished.
