Oakboro this year? I get to go this year, so I am already excited. I guess there are two areas of nats experience, battling and social. Some like one more than the other, but we all play with toy boats. 1. Something that encourages veterans to team up with rookies prior to nats so that their boats might work a little better (via email)? 2. Admirals to work together with each other and the CD so there are no issues prior to nats? Such as reviewing ships and fleet composition 3.? Not sure if that is constructive or what you asked for, but a good first step so thanks Jeff.
Do we have admirals? Do we care? Is it flag no flag? Is it campaign? Do we want/care about balanced fleets?
My thoughts: Admirals seem like a necessity, too many cats to herd otherwise. I tend to have a better experience in a close loss than a blow out win. If Flag/No Flag provides for a better battling experience, I'm all for it. Campaign (in the current form or with some changes) is a nice change from straight fleet battles, emphasizes less common ships (Class 3 & lower, as well as convoys), and requires slightly different build parameters/battle style. I think all of those are good. What do you mean by balanced fleets? If you want balance between the "Axis" and "Allied" portions of the ship list I dont think that accomplishes anything on the water, what happens on the water is dominated by who is on either fleet and what boat they are in. If you want balanced fleets on the water you need take the Builder/Battler into account as well, and that can change so quickly that tweaking the rules to try and keep up seems like a fools errand. Night Battle is also a hoot. A skills competition or something on wednesday could be fun too, some sort of driving/shooting challenge, more like a biathlon maybe? A way to play with our toys but a small break from combat.
Wednesday is already a break from battling. Only some of the cruiser guys show up at the pond. I want all the battling time I can get. The hobby is 99.999% non battling already. Sorry for the rant chris Randy
I agree with you Randy. There needs to be something else to get people to the pond on Wednesday because what we do non doesn't work that great at it.
Balanced fleets good. Engaged admirals good. I'm pro campaign, I think most of the group that will show up is as well I know that some feel strongly about maintaining allied axis, so I think pre-sorting the fleets and having people willing to build/battle on the other side is important. To get balanced fleets, I think it needs to start with those at the high end of the combat food pyramid self-dividing between allied/axis, vice the majority all fighting on one side. We would also need a fair number of previous allied captains to switch over to axis. I just made 8 neutral hulls which could provide a 3-4 boat swing in numbers towards axis. We could put an email out to the yahoo list and start seeing what's in everyone's plans for attendance and ship and go from there. One idea that was tossed around previously for wednesday was a pre-dread death match. I don't think there are too many active among captains that actually show up to Nats, but maybe if we put the idea out more people would build them. There were a lot of those deutschland kits sold, I haven't seen one at an event yet I also think if the secondary ships rule proposal passes that it would be more fun for everyone, more stick time for those that sink in the first sortie. I plan on having a functioning class 3 ship that otherwise sits on the shelf all year
Not enough Axis? we'll see about that, I've got two shiny new German battlewagons ready to rumble, complete with moustaches and mad science.... If you want something to do on Wednesday, here's a thought. One thing I used to do in Big Gun during the off-season was something called a Gunnery/Maneuvering event. This was an obstacle course with various targets along the way. Obstacles would include challenges like a "minefield", a narrow strait, and parallel-parking at a dock. Targets were often water bottles anchored to the bottom, but sometimes included toy cars on a dock, steel plates, or even a half-gallon milk carton sheeted with balsa. Since different ships move at different speeds, you couldn't just give victory to the shortest time - each captain would guess how long it'd take for their ship to complete the course, with a time penalty for every obstacle hit, and a time bonus for every target shot. This was always a popular event during the off-season, since even unarmed or partially-built ships could compete - and win - and it proved a great place to test new construction or just keep from getting rusty. We had non-combat modelers show up, and I even ran my 1:96 scale USS Constitution through the course once.
Sounds like precision steering course with gun fire. We love to go to our local precision steering contests and take all of the trophies. But.... set up time for a course can take a while, so you need some volunteers to run it.
And we could take a break at noon from the hyper-exciting steering contest and bring in a yoga instructor to calm us down . Sorry, I couldn't resist. Randy OK if you really want to balance axis allied you have to determine if Tim and Chris are coming and what ships they are bringing. But this is never known until sunday. I'm sure there are legitimate reasons for this. All the other big guns sign up but not always with ship they actually bring. Randy
@Kevin P. and @Bob Pottle are onto something with their Neutral Powers ships. if enough people build neutral ships, then the balance between fleets could be more readily struck. And some of those oddball ships are actually pretty cool.
The French were not neutral, they just fought for both sides. In a way it's kind of the same thing, but not.
Just curious, what are the dates for Nats 2019? The sooner I can plan out leave, the more likely Kotori and I can make it.
Make Cruiser Battle a scored battle for Nats. Add a Fleet Battle Wednesday or Admirals 1v1 battle. Campaign is fun but its like many things in life, the more effort you put in to it the more enjoyment you get out of it. I got a year to make up for so I'm all for battling all day everyday. I'll be flying across the country or driving 2K miles to attend so that paints my desire to get in as many sorties as possible. Then again some people don't even want to take the effort to tweak their guns, so, enjoyment is many things to many people.
There should be more cruisers this year assuming the rule passes. But a fleet battle on Wed? ! GOOD LUCK At saranac I sat at the pond all afternoon, nobody showed up. But maybe it's cuz they knew I was there. Wandy
Under the present scoring rules, making the cruiser battle scored like fleet battles would hurt the score of anyone who does not use a cruiser in fleet battle, providing an addition divisor for the total score. We used to have a great deal more one-on-ones than we have had recently for some unknown reason. If you wish to battle more, do more one-on-0nes or small fleet battles!
