With all this interest in predreads. Does anybody else think that a predread division for any of the rulesets would be cool? It could be called the "Steampunk Flotilla" and be based off of designs from that most interesting time of warship design, the age of the ironclads.
To make it interesting, I wouldn't base it off of years launched. I'd base it off of design aspects of the ship. Something like "An armored ocean going design of predominantly iron or steel construction with primary propulsion of recipricating steam piston with main armament in rotating barbettes or turrets that can train fore or aft". I think such a criteria would be very inclusive of just about any wimsical design of the period but keep the older sail-based (typically side-mounts only) and river monitors (no freeboard to shoot at) designs out of the mix.
Is this just for large battleships? Because there are some neat cruisers in that period, but most don't fit the description "armored". Great idea, and I would love to see it become a reality.
I'm all about inclusivety. We can change armored to armed. This opens it up for the protected cruisers like the C1 Newark.
Hull shape and propulsion idea. Since plans for most ships of this era would be difficult to come by in most cases. What's everybody's thoughts on adopting a standardized underwater hull design for every ship? A flat bottomed, slab sided canoe type hull design comes to mind. The builder would have to stick to the scale overhead profile, length, and breadth of any particular design. A requirement could be a minimum of 1" underwater of penetrable area for a percentage of its length. My thoughts on this is that it would make for a very easy build and make the models more stable. On propulsion, my thought is to settle on a standard prop and motor size for single prop and dual prop ships. We also set a standard voltage. My thoughts on this is that if every ship has the same propulsion units and the same underwater hull design, we could do away with speed tables and just let physics dictate speed. If a builder wants a faster ship, they build a longer skinnier one, a more maneuverable ship, a shorter fatter one. Comments?
Proposal one looks like a good idea. That will eliminate the need for accurate hull drawings. Proposal two is a little bit more iffy. In history, some ships had bigger displacement/hull size than others, yet had about the same speed. Using the same motor/prop combo on every ship will have the smaller ships going faster than the bigger ships that would have been the same speed (or faster) in RL. Another point is, that some ships had three props. Would you need to use the the middle prop, or all three. Drag props? Another thing is brushed versus brushless. I've seen that some people only use brushed motors in their ships, whereas others swear by brushless. These are just what popped up in my head. Nothing wrong with the idea, it just might be a little hard to do.
I'm down with R/C Warship NASCAR. Make it about who is the better builder/battler/team not which country 60-100 years ago made a ship that have features which make it "better" in our hobby. You loose the "fun" nationalistic pride but you also get rid of all the axis/allied "balance" arguments and "this for that" trades in the rules that don't make any sense and are causes for extra contention. The hobby is pretty non-historical anyway so why pretend? Make a few different standard designs for each class so you still have to make some meaningful ship selection choices (3 shafts or 4, triples sterns or a stern sidemount, things like that.). Standardized ships would make full kits or RTR ships more realistic as well as make plan availability issues disappear. So maybe a little more variation than NASCAR but whats in a name, it isn't like they race stock cars...
Ahoy Steve, I have done extensive research into predreadnought battleships, cruisers, and smaller vessels, with the specific intent of writing a Big Gun type ruleset for them. During this research, I compiled a spreadsheet list of all the "predreadnought" type ships from each major navy in Conways All the World's Fighting Ships, including battleships (type 1), armored cruisers (type 2), protected cruisers (type 3), and torpedo-armed boats (type 4). Of greater interest is that I also listed each ship's armament including major gun calibers and torpedoes, speed, shafts/rudders, main armor thickness, armor type, and overall dimensions. That spreadsheet is already posted in the file manager under my name. I also have a conversion factor for each of the different armor types from coal to iron to steel to Harvey steel to Krupp steel. Unfortunately I will be away from my computer for morst of this year, but hopefully Gascan will find the conversion factor in my documents and post that file. Although there are not plans available for each different ship class, there are plenty of plans available for each different type of ship. Should plans be unavailable, I imagine it wouldn't be too difficult to re-size the plans from a similar ship to match basic dimensions and profile. It is also possible to draw your own ribs, if you know how the basic hull is shaped. Lastly, Predread combat is best suited for 1:96 scale. the battleships aren't ridiculously oversized, but it is a large enough scale that even the little boats like the Novik can be built without too much stress.
If the hull shapes are simplified above and below the waterline, with paint jobs and flags differentiating the teams, then boatbuilding gets VERY easy and eases new people in, and I think the hobby would be more about friendships and playing on the water than yelling Banzai. Full disclosure, I love yelling Banzai, but anyone who's ever battled flag/no-flag with me has heard me railing against the 'Evil flag empire oppressing the fierce and proud no-flag nation'. The key thing in this is that I like it removing a lot of the hypercompetitiveness. It would drive people looking to win to ensure that everything inside is maximally reliable... a thoroughly desireable state of affairs. I would go further and say that the 'standard pump', 'standard props', etc could be of a 3D printed nature, and the appropriate files put on Thingiverse (and anywhere else) under a creative commons license (or something similar) so that anyone could access them, and new people could get them for minimal cost. For that matter, with a super-easy underwater shape, the hulls themselves scream out for 3D printing (not that it's hard to do that shape in wood, either).
If the hull shapes are simplified above and below the waterline, with paint jobs and flags differentiating the teams, then boatbuilding gets VERY easy and eases new people in, and I think the hobby would be more about friendships and playing on the water than yelling Banzai. Full disclosure, I love yelling Banzai, but anyone who's ever battled flag/no-flag with me has heard me railing against the 'Evil flag empire oppressing the fierce and proud no-flag nation'. The key thing in this is that I like it removing a lot of the hypercompetitiveness. It would drive people looking to win to ensure that everything inside is maximally reliable... a thoroughly desireable state of affairs. I would go further and say that the 'standard pump', 'standard props', etc could be of a 3D printed nature, and the appropriate files put on Thingiverse (and anywhere else) under a creative commons license (or something similar) so that anyone could access them, and new people could get them for minimal cost. For that matter, with a super-easy underwater shape, the hulls themselves scream out for 3D printing (not that it's hard to do that shape in wood, either).
Something else, almost all the ships back then were single-rudder. Simplifies builds and prevents gnashing of teeth over single-rudder vs. duals. Balsa thickness should be simple. Battleships(predreads) get X, everybody else gets Y. Keep it simple, no room for arguing nor picking and choosing for advantage.
Speeds could be simple,yet limiting, so that armored cruisers aren't going faster than protected cruisers. Something like this. PreDred: 28-33 sec. ArCrsr: 27-24 PrCrser: 23-21 Or something to that extent.
How much of the French archive did you snatch von Tugboat? IIRC they had some of the designs from the 1880's which are as odd as any one could desire.
I have the entire collection (as does Tugboat IIRC), I think the largest ships that were in that collection from the 1880's were protected cruisers. Still some interesting ships like Amiral Cecille. I think I also have plans for the Dupuy Du Lome, which is of that era (doesn't get much weirder . The 1890's plans have a few more options including the early predreads.
I for one would like to stay away from scale aspects of the modeled ships except for length and beam at the most. The idea is ease of build and let physics maintain speed and maneuver parity. If a standard underwater design is specified (that is scaled up or down to fit the modeled ship), a specified minimum draft is mandated, and the same propulsion on each model, speed tables would not be required. For this thought experiment, I'd even propose a single prop of the same size and type for all models, a single unbalanced rudder behind that prop, and the same motor. I'd also propose no drag appendages as none would be needed since no model would be overpowered (to gain an advantage in acceleration) because everyone is running the same motor and voltage.
