New/Restarted Club in sunny Southern California!

Morning, if you guys are still thinking about starting up the club let me know. Steve Mielke , smielke549@gmail.com I do have couple of Bolzano's that are ribbed out .

 

I'm just down the street from Elsinore let me know I like to meet up with you

 

Awwww... wish South Coast could restart...

 

SCRAPS is looking to allow big gun guys to battle if there enough guys interested.

 

So where are we on restarting South Coast Battle Group? Since we're all essentially quarantined...AGAIN! It seems like a good time to spend building. I've moved back to SoCal and am now located in Lake Arrowhead with no plans to ever move again.....now that I'm retired. Still unpacking and get our mountain home restored and set up. I now have a dedicated area to build a shop (shipyard)....once I get everything unpacked. I have two ships on the ways; RM Littorio and IJN Takao (I think it's the Takao.....still unpacking). Will probably be a couple of more months before the shop is set up and functional, but right now all I got is time.

Sooooo who is REALLY interested in getting this thing kicked off? My goal is building, fighting and FUN.....no politics, no B.S., no cheating. Keep it simple - keep it real - and keep it fun.

 

SCRAP is still active if you are unable to get enough people together and still want to shred some balsa. Hell, I’ll build a big gun if there are enough guys interested. I just want to shoot some bbs but Covid is really harshing our groove, also Cyanobacteria, so apparently mother nature hates us.

 

Yay, more axis ships.
If this happens, tell me. It would be cool to do a CA wide battle one day.
Also, do you plan to use WWCC rules?

 

Just skimmed through the 2019 WWCC rule book and don't see why they shouldn't be adopted for the "raised & restored" SCBG. I'm a firm believer in "Keep It Simple Stupid". So see no reason to reinvent the wheel as it were when it comes to rules. My PRIMARY focus is on camaraderie and FUN!! That's what we had when JC started SCBG and I feel that, that should be the major impetus in bringing the club back. I also feel that a major point should be to strive for real world factual capabilities....within reason, and to keep it fun.

I understand that after I left SCBG due to military assignment that there was some sort of issue within SCBG regarding attempts at unrealistic capabilities of certain ships, namely Kitakami Torpedo cruisers.


I heard that some club members wanted to arm all available torpedo tubes on such a ship, which in our scale gaming would have given an extremely unrealistic advantage to this type of ship. Reality Check time. My opinion is....SURE, if you can come up with an appropriate version of the Japanese "Over the Horizon" Long Lance Torpedo and operate at the appropriate distance, say twenty or thirty PLUS feet or more away from your target. That would be more realistic of the actual capabilities of that class of ship than a point blank run against a superior classed Battleship or Cruiser that would have in reality blown the "Kits" completely out of the water almost immediately upon being sighted. REMEMBER....this is a GAME and is supposed to be FUN!! The Kit's were a stand off over the horizon weapon system, not a toe to toe battler. I could be wrong, but that's what I've read about them and their use by the Japanese. YMMD.

Yes Destroyers and Cruisers can take out Battleships and such, but only with a HELLVA lot of luck and at an EXTREMELY high risk to their own survival in reality. They don't run point blank up against a full ship of the line.....and survive. Yes, there was a German Merchant Raider that sank an Australian Cruiser in a fluke engagement.....but is wasn't a routine event and the Raider also sank as a result.

With all things, we need to remember and focus on keeping the balance and FUN in the game.

 

We solved that with the limit to 3 torps per side, but reloading torps every 30 secs are allowed. Torpedo ships still present a menace, and submarines are a bit OP (provided you actually can make one), but it's all good fun. My Kitakami is fine without 40 torps, no need to get salty about a ship sinking.

 

Well that was a simple solution. I like simple.

 

I was at the forefront of torpedo development in the WWCC from 2005-2011, so I hope you don't mind me weighing in here. I helped write and re-write the torpedo rules and combat doctrines for torpedoes at a time when we routinely fielded several cruisers and battleships per side. The WWCC's torpedo rules, as they stand, are based on extensive experience and many people's judgements both on historical accuracy and in-game fun. As Nibbles said, the WWCC currently limits torpedoes to 3 per side maximum. They can either be automatically reloaded while at sea, or they can be simple single-shot mechanisms that get reloaded on shore several times per sortie. The single-shot mechanisms are the most popular, due to their simplicity and reliability, although I have heard that reloading torps are becoming popular.

First of all, I would like to remind everyone that we are NOT playing a historically accurate recreation of WWII surface combat. If you want that, there are computer games that are far more historically accurate than our hobby. This is a game of toy boats that is very loosely inspired by the Dreadnought Era. We are aiming by eye, firing round shot through smooth-bore cannons, and depressing our guns so we can get as close as possible to punch holes below the waterline. Our toy boats may look like WWII battleships, cruisers, and destroyers, but our warship capabilities most closely resemble ironclad and predreadnought-era combat. Our tactics are also straight from the age of steam and iron. You get in close, and hammer away until one or the other sinks. In this era, torpedoes were a novel new weapon with very short range but devastating potential. Compared to effective battleship gun range, I think we've actually nailed that pretty well. But that doesn't matter. Historical accuracy is insignificant next to the importance of fun, and anytime those two priorities come into conflict, fun must win out. SCBG did not do this, and collapsed as a result.

I kept track of damage records while I was in the club, and paid particular attention to how much damage each sunk ship took, and the cause of the sink. Based on several years of analysis, I estimated that one pump could keep up with about three to five battleship-caliber holes below the waterline (if it worked). Most battleships have two pumps, and most popular battleships have triple turrets. This means that you can theoretically take fatal damage in 16 seconds, assuming all shots hit and penetrate below the waterline. Given a battleship's effective accuracy of just 1-2% below-waterline hits though, sinking a battleship usually requires dedicated effort by another battleship and a fair bit of luck. Hits above the waterline don't let in significant amounts of water until the underwater hits exceed the ship's pumping capacity, so even dozens of above-water hits without sufficient belows was proven to be inconsequential. Torpedo cannons as they currently stand do not change the time or effort required to sink a battleship. A properly-operated torpedo cruiser hits below the target's waterline about 25% of the time. Each torpedo-cruiser gets two shots (one per side) per cycle, with between 2-4 cycles in a 15-minute sortie. Thus a single torpedo-cruiser has decent odds of causing fatal damage to a battleship, if it focuses on a single battleship for the entire sortie. A torpedo-cruiser has just one pump, so it is risking fatal damage from a single turret every time it attacks. Keep in mind that this is a generalization from statistics over several years. There was quite a lot of variability to both accuracy and survivability due to individual ship construction, reliability, captain skill, and teamwork. A well-coordinated group of torpedo-cruisers could sink a single battleship very quickly.

That isn't to say battleships are completely at the mercy of torpedo-boats. That wouldn't be very fun or fair. Like I said, a torpedo-cruiser has just one pump, so it is risking fatal damage every time it attacks. It ultimately is a matter of who hits who. If a battleship and cruiser exchange hits, the battleship will survive and the cruiser will not. From the battleship's perspective, it's mostly a matter of setting up an even exchange of fire. Early on, it was easy for cruisers to avoid even exchanges due to slow turret traverse speed and lack of experience, but by the time I moved to the east coast, the battleship skippers had figured out how to deal with the threat and cruisers were going down more often than battleships. I don't know if that is still the case.

One of the last developments to the torpedo rules occurred just before I left. We passed a rule allowing someone to use a single torpedo tube loaded with 3 balls in place of a triple torpedo tube. This results in a much simpler cannon that can be constructed from MJV-2's, rather than custom cannons built on a lathe and mill. I tried this setup out in a Z-boat, built specifically to hunt other torpedo-boats. It proved very capable at this task due to its better speed and maneuverability than the larger cruisers in use at the time. Over several battles, I discovered that the setup had a very distinctive damage pattern. Unlike the three-in-a-row pattern of standard torpedo-cruisers, the three-ball cannon has a vertical spread due to the significant recoil, resulting in better odds of scoring a below-waterline hit. It also seemed to have better penetration deep below the waterline than regular cannons due to the tunneling effect, but would only leave one hole rather than three.

 

Thanks for your input and historical background on the evolution of torpedo use in your club. Sounds like you found a good compromise to power and fun. I've been out of the game for a number of years and looking to get back into it and would love to revive SCBG. The issues with torpedoes in SCBG happened after I had left and from what was related to me was a major factor in the club eventually fading away. This game is supposed to be FUN and that's what I'd like to come back to.

 

Hey so... Is anyone still interested in doing Big Gun combat again?

 

If you move to the East Coast, you can Big Gun with the MABG…