Here is the download sitre for the Steampunk plans. There are links for the Battleship, Armored Cruiser, and Protected Cruiser. Also will be adding plans for upper decks as they become available. *Temporaily down for update! DOWNLOAD FOR STEAMPUNK PLANS
Thread is pinned, given the importance of the plans to the hobby. Once Spudsy makes them downloadable
Downloadable plans on hold pending review by design staff (Steve) after prototype full-power trials (probable time-frame: March)
If it would be any help, I've "Google-Fu'd" some incredibly detailed plans of the following ships from the French Naval Archives: Bretagne-1913 Courbet-1911 France-1912 Jean Bart-1911 Lorraine-1913 Provence-1913 The files are pretty large, even zipped they are 38 to 50 Megabytes each. Lots and lots of detail, top and profile views and enough hull stations to build a hull. Not sure how to upload them to this website.
A couple of us have the full archive stashed I think. I highly doubt the French government is going to send me a takedown notice - this site claims they were released into public domain, but I haven't seen any evidence to back that claim. The preference for plans in the resource section is for ones that have been at least scaled to one of the major scales (the frenchies aren't) and ideally cleaned up (a lot of the frenchies were skewed during the storage or scanning process). The goal is to share plans that are usable immediately or with only minimal alterations needed (such as scaling). If you wanted to share a plan set I would suggest scaling them and saving as optimized PDFs. You can likely get the size down considerably as part of that process.
From what I've read the Frog plans are in the public domain and available for use....until some nimrod hacked their website and totally hosed everything up. I'd love to be able to clean up and scale the plans for our use....what's the best program to use for that for someone starting out in that area. Since I'm retired.....I have the time to learn some new tricks (yes old dogs can be taught....with lots of treats) and do this, barring "she who must be obeyed....issues)
Stupid question time....what scale are we using? I thought we were going with 1/144 the same as for Big Gun and several others, however as I was searching for the standardized Spec's hull plans I opened a link (plans link) and while the actual plans can't be downloaded yet....they are listed as 1/96? Is that correct? Crap! Please tell me it's not 1/96....... Also, I want to build something along the lines of the French Battleship Messena with its extreme tumbelhome hull and with that awesomely huge low protruding ramming bow. I noticed on McSpud's CHS EVil he had a beautiful ramming bow (I assume the upper section of that bow was the Steampunk part), but for some reason the "rules" required him to trim it flat? OK...but what if the actual ship you're modelling really did have that exact shape and form of lower bow? I really like that backwards slash of a bow on this period ship. (Reminds me of the battleship playing piece in my first Monopoly game when i was a kid.....yes we had board games that long ago!!) On the dimensions are we working with the Over-All length, Water-Line length, Main-Deck length? Yes I realize I'm being a pain in the arse, but I'm just trying to figure out how to get the "look" I want and stay within the spirit and intent of the rules and keep everyone happy. I've never built such a weird shaped ship as this Messena....which you have to admit has some very - VERY - VERY weird and funky shapes and lines (perfect for Steampunk), so I'm not quite sure draw up and adjust the plans. Not to mention how in the hell I'm going to get the balsa to bend that way. Though I do remember back in the day working on my HMS Repulse' torpedo bulges I think I used some sort of water and ammonia spray/soak to get the wood to flex well beyond what it normally could....has anyone else ever done that? Oh well....my intention is to stick as close as possible to the actual overall lines of the Messena and perhaps go a little crazy with the superstructure along the lines of Miyazaki's Steampunk battleships plus lots of little Steampunk details.
The intent of SP is to keep it as simple and fair as possible. We are standardizing on three spec hull designs that are loosely based on 1/96 scale averages of ships of the Victorian era (these ships are smaller so we went with 1/96). To address the simple and fair aspect, ships must be built to the scale plans below the waterline. The intent of this is to keep the performance of the three classes on par with other builders ships of the same class. As such, an exact scale representation of the Messena is not possible. To get the "look" of the Messena is a simple matter of adapting the above waterline profile to a stock BB or AC hull plan. The current BB build is an excellent example of how to do this. To get an even more pronounced ram bow swoop as on the Messena, just push the deck fo'c'sle point further back.
OK....that makes perfect sense and it's an easy work-around. I was wondering about the small size of the Pre-Dreads. Man those things were tiny compared to later more modern versions. Imagine a Messena going up against a Yamato or Iowa....YIKES!! Or heck even a WWII light cruiser would have handed them a serious mega can of whoop arse! Hee, hee, hee! So when are the Spec hull plans going to be available? Based on the EViL build thread they look simple enough. I have sheets of ply just begging to be cut up!!
Ok....stupid question time again. What are the "basic" overall dimensions of the standardized Spec's for: Battleship, Armored Cruiser, and Protected Cruiser. Overall Length, Length at the Water Line, Beam, Drafts of each. I can figure out everything from that for my build. Just need the basic parameters to work within. THANKS
That's whats so cool about the Victorian era as a basis for a performance based hobby like r/c warship combat. All the ships relied on the same (and by that time mature) triple-expansion steam technology which kept everyone's speed to about the same. Also, most nations where still using their old sail era support infrastructure (dry docks, berth's, channel depths, etc.) which tended to not only limit but also equalize the size of ships across nationalities. Plans will be made available after successful in water testing by the beta-builder group.
Ah...ha, well that makes sense. "Float test in a standard bathtub"....now you guys are being extremely clever!
I'm planning an alternate history protected cruiser named after the Confederacy's most loved Union General, the CSS George B. McClellan. Or maybe an armored cruiser named the CSS Dr. Arliss Loveless. Or maybe a protected cruiser/pocket Carrier called the USS Artemus Gordon... Hmm... But anyway I needz planz!
