This may sound like a weird question to a established rule. Why are rams illegal and not in use for ships that wear designed to do so, say a 1890's ship that had a ram bow as apposed to a 1910 super dreadnought that did not have one. Famous example of a ram kill, well almost and by accident: HMS Hawke ramed the HMS Olympic as she passed by and the suction of the larger vessel drew the smaller vessel toward causing a collision. So in that case the ram bow of the warship did what it was designed to do.
At least in my experience, intentional rams are uncool for a number of reasons. The cannons on our ships do relatively minimal actual damage. You want my 42lb Jean Bart coming at your Kongo or Nagato at 24s and slamming you broadside? That might break fiberglass ribs and crack subdecks. I had an HMS Revenge pull out in front of me and I rammed him broadside just as described above, even after slamming full reverse to try and avoid. I hit him, my bow drove me up and I caught him and he turned turtle. Also, the shiplist only goes back to 1905, so most of those "1890's ships with ram bows" wouldn't be permitted. Some ships do have noticeable ram bows even still, but you want to actively avoid the ram penalty, not cause it.
Thank you for answering my question. I was just wondering, it seemed like a good question to ask. That was a really good visualization that I had not considered, the damage toll.
Even though a lot of ships from the 1880-1890's had ram bows not all of them actually were rams - the forward thrust of the bow was a very common design choice but a fully reinforced ram was less common in to 1890's vs. the ships in the 1800. Back in that time period a real ram bow was considered to be an effective weapon and it was extremely effective when contact was made (whether on purpose or otherwise ! - I've always had the thought that if a ship was designed with a reinforced ram - that ram was part of it's offensive weaponry package. This would all work and make sense if the ships were constrained to their scale historical speed though.... otherwise you'd have a ship zipping around able to match or catch anything on the water and poking holes in (most likely) just about every friend and foe. Additionally i'd think that if a ship wasn't designed with a reinforced ram it should have a bow made of kitchen grade aluminum foil with a backing of 1/32" balsa birdcage for support (now that would stops the errant ramming pretty quick!
Vacu-formed birdcage plated over with tinfoil and tissue paper would be feasible to this aim. but jeez that be a pain in the butt to deal with! Leave ramming to Circle-of-Death battles. I put a ton of time into my boat and don't want to be on the receiving end of Will's above stated equation, lolol
Yes, I agree - it would fantastic if an accidental ram resulted in cheers of "enemy ship down at bow!" and like a pack of wild pack of hyenas those ships with armored rams moved in for the feast. If the current shiplist is constrained to 1905 and up, maybe we need a 1905 and under ship list for the ones that like menagerie of designs that are vastly different and would need to fight in a vastly different way =)
I have always thought that 1:96 scale or 1:72 scale would be well-suited to cover the Predreadnought Era. big enough for both protected cruisers and armored cruisers to be practical combatants, small enough that battleships aren't ridiculous. If you are interested in incorporating ramming though, it would require a very careful balance between armor thickness and ship speed. In Big Gun, the combination of slower speeds and thicker armor means that accidental collisions rarely result in flooding. I have seen the occasional destroyer get rolled over by a battleship, and I once managed to punch a solid hole in Gascan's VU with my own VU when his ship was pinned against a tree branch and couldn't recoil from the impact. Even then, I would still prefer not to allow deliberate ramming. We have enough accidental collisions already.
Totally agree. The "Steampunk Flotilla" concept was vaguely 1/96th scale but, unfortunately, it never really took off. : ( I'm working on something that would be set in the Dreadnought to Jutland Era where pre-dreds would still be around but, not the top dogs anymore. I've been working on generic 3DP hulls that would probably look the part, so a pre-dred game would interest me greatly. : ) PS. Even Dreadnoughts had Ram-like bows and HMS Dreadnought, herself, used hers to sink a submarine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Dreadnought_(1906)#Service_record
I think some ships that historically had rams could still exist in a steampunk / predreadnaught type format with a change to the ways the boats are setup. Instead of a big gun hull that is design to spread flooding throughout the ship unrestrained with only it's bilge pump as protection against sinking I could see where a compartmentalized hull (with no pumps) might be attractive to consider - a hull which would be easier to perforate but allow an accumulation of damage in different areas might be a solution. There's various thicknesses of aluminum foil (from kitchen grade which is 0.00063" thick to really thin aluminum flashing at 0.00780" thick ( 12 times thicker than kitchen grade) so areas of armor could actually have thicker material, and it also might be possible to use a much lower air pressure to for the guns (and that might make things safer). But specifically when it comes to rams - I believe more ships from the 1880's (which were slower and had fewer guns) had them vs those in the 1890's (which were beginning to implement more speed, armor, range, and powerful guns).
I had wondered about this myself, and this is what I found after scouring the internet: A proper ram bow - one designed to intentionally inflict damage to an enemy hull - was a heavily reinforced structure installed on ships of the latter half of the 19th century, when armor was usually more powerful than cannons: With the introduction of improved rifled breech-loading cannons, armor penetration improved and battle ranges increased, and the tactic of ramming enemy vessels became relatively impractical. However, it was found that the ram bow shape cuts under the waves and reduces the pitching motion in rough seas, so naval designers kept the ram profile but did not provide the reinforcement needed to actually make it an effective weapon. At the beginning of the 20th century, the Chief Constructor of the U.S. Navy, David W. Taylor, was able to determine the underlying principles that gave the ram bow its advantages, and refined the concept to produce the "bulbous" bow. You can see the transition from this (1902) to this (1905):
I think there were a few other subs sunk in WWII from a ramming but I'm guessing a reinforced ram bow is probably not a necessity vs a sub - all you really need to do is rupture thin skin of the ballast tanks and she's a gonner...! The HMS Polythemus that Caractacus Patt mentioned is one of the few examples of a "torpedo ram" ship - here's another picture of that bow: There were a few ships made that were designed specifically as ram ships - the USS Katadin being a good example - although it was probably too slow to catch an sink anything that was trying to run away from it! And then you have the French ones: An the Italian....
I'm a super pre-dreadnaught fanatic myself and would love a pre-dreadnaught game too. Considering that pre-dreadnaughts had few and often slow loading main guns there would need to be some secondary guns that fire too but that might be a bit of a challenge to engineer. I'd just love tool around with the Matsushima with secondary guns spraying and praying while the single main gun had something like a 2 min cool down before the next shot.
Fast gun combat is akin to battling in a phone booth. For rams "Dont bring a knife to a gun fight". Why I was told we have some of the basic rules like ramming "How about you drive 4+ hours, pay to spend a night or two in a hotel and all associated costs, and then be sunk in the first minute of a battle. Repeatedly.... Fun factor sucks, and the clubs will have a hard time recruiting and keeping new captains.
I think this thread is about trying something new. Not everything has to follow the same rules as fast gun.
I would love to see a pre-dread era game like that. all of the weird boats and configurations you could have would just be so much fun. I think the secondaries could be manageable at 1/72 scale for arming. if you use different armor sheeting thicknesses and such, it may even make ramming doable.
I do like the idea of a predreadnought-era game. And yeah, 1:72 or 1:96 is about the ideal size for it. Queen's Own has no idea what they're missing. I found, however, that there are a few predreads on their ship-list. Between the lower scale speeds and the heavier balsa, ramming might not be the game-wrecker it is in Fast Gun. I would still be very careful about trying it, though. The most important part of any game is that the players have fun.
Why did they go with 1/96 scale when 1/100 is a negligible size difference, I would consider a easier size scale to get right.
in 1/96, 1 inch = 8 feet. it's a function of the imperial measurement system. there were 1/150 scale boats at one point in fastgun though. like, way back in the day.
I think that was probably because there were a wide variety of fittings available in 1/96 scale. It has really always been the traditional ship model scale. Many of the plans used by the British ship yards were in 1/8 inch to the foot and many of the "Builder's Models" were also built to that scale. It's a pretty common scale for more modern RC warships too. So... I know this is sacrilege but, what about HO scale? 1:87 is right in the middle of the range that keeps coming up. There aren't any commercially available hulls in HO, that I know of but, it seems we're all thinking about odd ball ships that weren't getting much love anyway. There are figures and plenty of other scale "things" made in HO that could be useful. I beleive that the ships we're talking about would sail more realistically in that larger scale. Thoughts?
