I was reading through the rules the other day and I noticed a rule that I must have skipped over. Rule 4, B states this: 4. Captains wishing to arm torpedoes aboard their ship must arm at least half (rounding up) of their main gun turrets. (i.e. if your ship has 5 primary turrets, you'd need to arm at least 3 of them to get torpedoes). I was thinking of my destroyer/torpedo boat. It has two deck guns plus torps. I was only planning on putting one spring-powered torpedo in if I could fit it, but I don't have the room nor the weight to fit a bb gun in to allow me to get just one torp. Can I just put the torpedo in without having a bb gun as well? Thanks,
You have correctly interpreted the rule, you must arm one of the guns to have torpedoes. Those are the original rules, but we are experimenting with some changes in the Midwest Naval Combat Club. First, we have eliminated the requirement to arm 1/2 the main armament. We did this to make arming a ship simpler, with the objective being to get more ships on the water. So if you show up at one of our battles with only a torpedo, we are going to let you play. I suspect that if Battlestations battles start happening in other places, they will give you a waiver and let you battle. The rule was intended to make it hard to have torpedo cruisers that would have an unfair advantage. With your ship you will never dominate the water, so a little compromise is ok.
Mark is correct, the armament rule was mainly to prevent one-shot kills like those possible from a Kitikami/Ooi. As small as the V-106 is, it will be very difficult to outfit, let alone arm.
When we wrote the rules, it was exactly as Dustin said. I would suggest an amendment to the Battlestations! rules to allow small torpedo boats to run just the torp launchers, kind of like Kotori's small 1/144 torp-boat terror. It's got an accumulator that he charges with an air compressor on shore, goes out and shoots it's two tubes, and then comes back in to rearm after its 2 minutes are up. I have no problem with allowing these as a formal part of the rules. Like Mark says, they will never dominate, but they are a lot of fun to have on the water, and will let people get into the hobby easier and faster, getting them hooked into building a bigger ship later
OK, on my Mogador I have a single stern cannon, and a quad mount amidships to simulate torpedoes. It does rotate so it can simulate torpedoes on both sides of the ship without a super complicated and heavy gun system. First, is this legal to do as per the rules? Second, must I add a bow gun to make the 1/2 main turrets armed provision? I want to be legal, but just spent the entire weekend at Mikey's getting it ready for the Denmark straits battle in 3 weeks. I won't have time to completely rearm it by then. I have more work to do on it yet and still have to get the Scharnhorst ready as well. Only have one weekend at home to do it all.
Your setup is legal. The torpedo rules are somewhat in flux, we have tried a couple variations in the last three years. Bring it and we'll let you run it. Rate of fire for torpedoes is 30 seconds between shots while BB is 3 seconds between shots.
We didn't get much support during rule making last year to renew our provisional rules, so the torp rules we used last year didn't get renewed. We can discuss the torp rules and add a new provisional rule in June if we want.
