Any suggestions on how to calculate feet per second from knots? I dont know how necessary it is but I would like to get as close to actual performance specs as possible. (I am in the planning stage and am converting measurements to make a blueprint. BB-63 is the ship.) Thanks! Blaine I know 33 knots = 55 ft per second... how do I scale that down?
Speed doesn't really scale because we move in real water not scaled down water. The best you can get is if it looks right. Mostly this is based on the size and location of the bow wave. For a 144th scale ship moving 100' in 24 sec looks about right for a 30 knott ship.
Thats really close to what I found from some other sites. Someone suggested 1/14.4 × 33 knots. I used that number to come up with 3.86ft/sec. In the case of the Missouri, that would be a little more than half her length per second... I have never seen these in real life/time. Does that velocity look good to you? Thanks for your help.
Hey, I've got conversions dialed in on a spreadsheet. You're not really doing scale at all with regard to speed in IRC. from what I can tell speed is a refined shotgun guess in the hobby, especially given the example of a 35 knot racehorse (Alaska) being considered "comparable" in speed in IRC rules to 26 knot WWI BCs and a 28 knot BB (North Carolina). Ignore the saltiness. It's in jest. I'm Alaskan. Anything that doesn't acknowledge all things Alaska as the best thing since sliced bread grinds my gears. especially maps that put me south of mexico and smaller than Texas. here's the general calculations if you want. The Seconds/100ft thing seems weird at first, but in practice it's a decent way to get precision with Macgyver-level logistics I was looking at the speed differences between IRC and Treaty when I was doing this, so that's what is going on with the IRC/Treaty crap on the left column. On the far right are the "true to scale" numbers. those are not fun speeds. it'd be like watching turtles stampeding through peanut butter. The speed thing in IRC, while unfair to the peerless capital ship that bears the name of the crown jewel of America's empire, is pretty neat-o in practice and turns the dynamic into a dogfight. I am going to likely rig both of my ships to do both IRC and treaty though, and may just keep the Alaska as a Treaty-only ship. their speed system is more nuanced and sets those scrappy little WWI BCs in their place, while acknowledging the primacy of America's Battlecruiser.
Woah now, easy there partner...you are trending towards the 'rookie knows best' part of the woods At snipe mentioned, scale ship speeds need to be determined by the Froude number, not a simple scale reduction Since I have time to build now I'm going to follow the 'build before type' rule and just share results that a fellow battler (and aeronautical engineer) came up with in 2008 From Ken K, "As in many other aspects, in our hobby we sacrifice "scale" for "playability" and try to achieve the best balance of "playability" as possible. Just as a point of interest though, I'll provide (below) a table listing true scale speeds for 1/144 scale models. These speeds are Froude scaled, which is the correct way to scale speeds to accurately represent the hydrodynamic characteristics of the full sized ship in model form (i.e. the drag characteristics of the model, and therefore how it moves through the water, is as close to the full scale ship as possible). Looking at the below table reveals an interesting fact in that somehow (if not by choice, then by luck...) our hobby speeds actually represent the true full scale ship speeds for ships in the 30 knot speed range. Unfortunately, full scale ships in the 25 knot and 21 knot speed range are not represented very well in our hobby though. This is also evident when our 1/144 scale ships are running on the pond as the 30 knot class ships usually have an accurate wave pattern along side their hulls whereas the 25 knot and especially the 21 knot ships do not (our slower model ships tend to "plow under" the water at their present speeds). Enjoy, Ken "
huh, neat-o. Counterintuitively, my one concern, aside from my joke about the Alaska and its "parity" with WWI BCs above, with the fast gun scale has been regarding the higher speeds. to me, the 28 second range appears to be closer to "scale" with regard to boat handling, while the higher speed, smaller, and lighter hulls seem to be heinously unstable at their given speed. My Northampton at 23 secs was heeling over in a decidedly non-scale manner, even when I had what I thought at the time was a reasonably low center of gravity, and the DDs just look like little rockets constantly on the verge of capsizing. That being said, I'm building a fast gun boat because "true scale" speed would be boring and as mentioned earlier, water can not be made to scale as a fluid. But if given the option, I'd run treaty rules with an Alaska because it's not a "blanket" speed convention and instead has a "if the ship could do it, then here's where it fits on the speed chart"
It took me a while to get over this one. With a background as an historian and preservationist, I want the ships to perform as closely to the originals as possible. Then I realized that the point of this is to have fun and exactly realistic and fun can be mutually exclusive. So I love ships that look cool or are historically interesting. If they are dogs in combat well I have to accept that.
There is nothing scale or historical about how we battle. We fight mostly stern to stern, never really happened. We never fit in a formation. Let's not even get into the distance, we shoot each other inches away. 15,000 yards at our scale is almost a football field. The bbs would have a hard time flying that far.
It is a game. It has rules so that it is as close to fair and mostly to keep the cost lower and the fun factor off the scale.
before we go too far off on a tangent regarding true scale, here's links to the fastgun rules. the speed stuff is on page 18 http://ircwcc.com/main/home/rules/ the dimensional conversions to translate to m/s, f/s, and m/h are pretty easy, and I can post them on monday if you need them (they're at my cabin).
Thanks! I printed the 50 page rule book yesterday. I haven't decided if i want to stick with a known organization and its regulations or if i want to make a hybrid model that more accurately represents the various armor thicknesses, caliber of ammunition, etc. I have a lot to consider but thanks for all the great info!
Newbie here so I just downloaded the rules that were linked for use in my North Hampton build. I do want to make sure that there aren't multiple fighting formats that are used in our area because although I want to be legal for battle I want it to be the prevalent battle format used in this area of Maryland. I don't understand the hybrid comment as I was envisioning building to a fixed set of rules for this class Heavy cruiser use in our area.
well I think there might be a Big gun outfit near you, might want to check and see what their rules are and see if it meshes with what you want to do.
