I am not mad that my idea was questioned. I was a little put out that among gentlemen, you referred to it as 'silly', and then you follow up by setting up a straw man that 'Tugboat thinks he's awesome'. YOU, sir, are clearly no one who has ever met me lakeside or observed my behavior at a battle. _If_ I ever make a claim to myself (or my ideas) being awesome, it will be in the same breath as I proclaim how thin and good-looking I am, in order to drive home the point that I am not at all serious. For the record, the following passage: 'Or are you suggesting that your ideas are so awesome that we should tell you how great they are?' cannot in any way be taken to mean anything polite. I've read it a few times, trying to find a benefit of the doubt on that, but no, it's pretty rude. I will leave the discussion at this point, so that I don't bring out anything worse from you. Good day, sir.
Perhaps assigning points to who sunk who is best not attempted as this is a team sport and (unless a 1v1) multiple captains normally work together to create the conditions that sink the enemy. One idea I have played with off and on is awarding sink badges to sunken ships. A small pennant that could be flown on the ship, as sort of a purple heart/badge of honor for those ships unafraid to mix it up with the enemy. Its far easier to determine a sink was from enemy action than to determine who did the damage.
I really like the sink badges. For me, that'd be way more fun than kill stickers. For those reading who are not Hovey or I, we worked it out and we're cool.
I was thinking a triangular pennant 1" high x 2" long. White = 1, yellow = 5, Red = 10, Blue = 25, Black =50 sinks. Pennants are to be displayed on the upper rigging of the ship. That way a ship could display her pride as a fearless warrior. The colors keep the number down to a reasonable amount. Although if you do run out of room up high then that is a lot of sinks! Plus its kinda fun and encourages people to get in there and fight which seems like a good thing to me. I suppose someone could try to farm pennants instead of actually battling, but this behavior strikes me as unlikely. Most people seem primarily focused on sinking the other guy. And if they do try to get sunk well then everyone else gets to have fun sinking them so everybody is happy.
I did a focus group this weekend, and the prevailing opinion at the regional battle was that people prefer to use a straight-up speed check (i.e. seconds per 100'), allowing options on propulsion, although a spec prop (like the $4 one from vac-u-boat) was okay. Definite likes were the simple spec hull below the waterline, everyone using the same prop (and single prop), and same pump, with 1 plain flat rudder. This is not me saying that these are rules; this was what we talked about at the battle, batting around ideas. I'm cool with the pennant idea, colorwise for the reasons given. Easier to see than kill stickers, and it looks nautical
Let me see if I am following: ironclad through pre-dreadnaught era, three allowable types (CP, CA, BB), a set speed for each type, one prop, one rudder, set pump, set cannon numbers for each type, and a shared hull for each type, only count sinks for points, badge of honor is how many times your ship has been sunk, above deck can be scale or whimsical. Is that correct?
It sounds like an accurate description of the concept... I go to pick up the armoured cruiser plans tonight! I smell an evening of woodcutting about to happen...
UGH. Went to pick up plans... apparently 'do not scale this' wasn't specific enough. The printer scaled up, so the CAE plans came out 7" too long and 1.5" too wide. So I will be getting them redone. At least they had the dignity to admit they screwed up and at least look like they felt bad. I may work on SS (not that there's a lot to do for this era!) this weekend as it is supposed to be pouring both Saturday and Sunday...
The stock Steampunk CAE; Steve sent me the plans to print. At this point, I may just print them on 8.5 x 14" and call it good.
Plans are printed and correct; building of the as-yet-unnamed AC* will commence in the morning after coffee, breakfast, and appeasement/bribery of the BuShips representatives, Chief hull Inspector TuxCat and Junior Assistant Propwasher Lucky-boo. Planning to build it around a regular 6V 12AH gel-cell that some many people are familiar with, and that plays with most ESCs and obviously with a MAG throttle. For testing purposes, it's getting a brushless motor and ESC that I already have sitting around, easy to get to speed and do testing with in the lake to see how she handles. The build will be documented and will have the [SF] tag for Steampunk Flotilla (altho Steampunk Fleet rolls off the tongue better, methinks) *correct term is CAE but newcomers might not be hip to the lingo, so I'll go with AC for now.
What is the origin of CAE? Heavy cruiser Elderly? I rather like the old USN designation for the type ACR.
I am just asking to clarify, was there a specific scale that was listed or maximum length, width? Thanks
Circa 1/96. The hulls are stock IIRC in three sizes for Protected Cruisers, Armored Cruisers and Battleships.
Circa 1/96. The hulls are stock IIRC in three sizes for Protected Cruisers, Armored Cruisers and Battleships.
Ye, the hulls below the waterline are the same, regardless of what they look like from that point UP. The idea is that anyone can build the basic hull with ease, and people desiring a scale-looking hull can scale the ship of their choice to fit the stock hull (48"x9" for BB, 48"x7.5" for AC, 44"x5" for PC).
Getting ready for Nats and the near-miss with a heart attack kinda distracted me. I'm not even allowed to look at the shop till next weekend.
