I'm thinking of doing a rule proposal to address a glaring omission toward the mighty pre-dread! Under IRC fastgun, anybody think of any reasons why pre-dreads that can have a sidemount shouldn't be allowed a rotate like class four and above?
the turrets are right on the deck, so I'd pose the question of how much down angle could you get while still being able to cross the deck? The Alaska's stern cannon has a limit of about ten degrees down angle with a similar beam. then after that, height of the boat above water, and there'd be your range. isn't the purpose of the PDN to be a small, angry junkyard dog built with close-in fighting in mind? I'm sure you could put some blocks in and have them lift the gun to clear across the hull as it rotates, but would having a Y-gunned South Carolina not suit the mission parameters better? Don't take this as naysaying. if you're gonna want to try it, I'll vote for it just to see how it flies. Speaking of, when do ballots etc go out?
As a driver of one of these cool boats, yes I'll support it. Range and down angle won't be impacted Anvil if the rotate is done right. The big issue with predreads is with only one turret for gun options on each end of the ship it's hard to defend both sides. With a rotate you can defend both sides so it doesn't matter so much what side that faster, more maneuverable ship comes up on.
It'd be neat to even allow two sidemounts on the little buggers, but yeah, sounds like a rotating cannon would make them even more rambunctious. I'm all for increasing the effectiveness of a platform like that.
I would wholeheartedly support this. If you can safely put a sidemount on a predread, then there's no reason you can't put a rotate on there. Especially with the new 3d printed compact cannons, it is easier than ever to make a rotate. And if you can only get 10 degrees of down-angle, well that's one of the trade-offs for the tactical flexibility of a rotate.
Putting two side mount a on a predread is too much. That would give them the same fire power as a VDT or iBoat. One puts them in a prefect spot. Rotating the side mount would be hard to do since the ships are so small.
Okay, that's fair. even those french psuedo-dreads? they're about the same size as a Courbet....oh dash it. if ya want more sidemounts, just build a Courbet then. Especially now that Kevin's cranking out hulls. Looking at Palmer's rotating turret, it'd be a squeeze with a standard sized servo. maybe pull what I'm doing with my Alaska and use a low profile servo.
Back in 2009-ish time frame when pre-dread's got sidemounts they were intentionally left out of being able to use a rotate. The thought was they would effectively be 28 sec cruisers with one sidemount, kinda their own little niche. (They are probably getting used more aggressively and with more aggressive gun layouts than was envisioned.) My recollection is that this was done for a few reasons: 1) An additional thing to differentiate them from class 4 ships (want 2 sidemounts? go class 4, want to rotate? go class 4) 2) Increase the chances of the rule passing by not asking for "everything", even letting class 3's have a sidemount was a fairly large change. (This rule originated in the MWCI which only allowed Class 3 and below reloads during campaign so this rule was adding in a reloadable sidemount into campaign. That was a pretty big change for the MWCI campaign rules, with current IRCWCC campaign rules it's not a huge deal since everything can reload.) 3) So few people used rotates at the time that it's not much of a sacrifice in order to get a sidemount. (remember: fixed sidemount > no sidemount) I don't think allowing the PDNs to have a rotate would have much impact on the game, it may well pass if you write the rule proposal for it. People will complain about power creep and just be curmudgeonly about it but that's par for the course around here. You'll get some people that build rotates, most will still build fixed turrets.
yep. you're right in that. I'm in the process of mounting one on an Alaska, and I don't really see a scenario in which I'd mount them on any other platform, unless they were absolutely paramount for effectiveness, as is the case for the AK. I wish that the sail winch servos were smaller, as it'd really help with regard to running gear to have a 3.5 turn servo attached to a 7:1 gear ratio rotating the turret instead of a hacked standard servo running on a 1:1 gearing. the stern of my AK will barely be able to squeeze all of it in, even accounting for a low profile servo in the mix.
There are some standard-sized sail winch servos available on Hobbyking, I have used them on various Big Gun ships for rotation with no problems. Strike Models used to sell them too.
The actual mechanism I'm contemplating wouldn't rely on a servo. Since I'm only interested in two fixed positions (port and starboard), I'd build a rotate powered by an ESC with limit switch inputs (Wasp and some others). Attached to a toggled channel on the Tx, one flick of the switch swings the cannon to one fixed point, another flick, to the other fixed point.
I'm working on parts that may help. This demo part is for a 1:144 Bismarck but, the but the whole package is pretty small and lightweight. For reference, the Anton barbette is scaled at 74mm in diameter and 11 mm tall. It is larger than the duplex 16 ball bearing assembly inside it so, it could be smaller. There is an almost 30 mm through hole from the bottom to allow various types of cannon to be mounted inside. One of my next steps is to fit it inside the turrets that HMS Dreadnought used, which I believe are the same as the ones on HMS Lord Nelson?
