Where you'd get 3 1/4" ribs, swapping to 3/16" ply gets you 4 ribs without much sacrifice in strength or sheet-ability.
Use a shotbag. Cloth bag full of lead shot, laid over the hull sheeting. you can then put extra solid weight on top. You mat need to brace the hull inside, though. Be careful.
so for batteries, I was thinking, do I go with 2 lifepo6 cells size F from Strike or do I go with 4 D cells from wally world or go with just a lantern battery?
$3 for a lantern battery that has 26 amps and thats nearly a whole years worth of battling so say 2 batteries per year
26AH is one or two battles worth of battling. At the discharge rates we see in combat, you will destroy a lantern battery in short order, because they are built around lighting a single bulb for a long time. That's a very low discharge rate, like 1/2 an amp. The 8AH LiPOs I'm running in Scharnie are capable of a 320A rate for short periods, and 10A wouldn't even faze them.
Ah, I was looking at the overall amps used, like in another post I saw a ship of 3.5 units used around 3 amps and so I was thinking that would equal about 8 battles per battery, forgot all about discharge, which I do not understand one bit how that is calculated
It depends on the type of battery, and even then there is some variation. For example, the battery I use in my transmitter is a LiPO, like the one in the ship, but it's made differently and can only handle 5A discharge at most, because it's designed for use in a low-discharge rate application, like a transmitter. It actually says ont he battery NOT to use it somewhere with a high current draw. The good news for you is that your basic LiPO and LiFe batteries have gotten pretty cheap, like $25-30 for 8AH at 6.6V (LiFE) or 7.2V (LiPO). That's an example, not a specific recommendation. But you won't have to break the bank to get decent batteries. Depending on how big your bank is
so lipo is safe in the ships, or am I thinking of Li-ion like a drill pack, also could a cordless drill pack work?
Some people cringe at the thought of LiPO in ships, I use them all the time, and they certainly see plenty of water
You could also turn to my standby friend, Nickel-Metal-Hydride. All the fun of High discharge rates, flat discharge curves, and light weight without the annoyance of special chargers and that explosioney feeling Just kidding, if you get the sealed Life packs they are fine. But I do run NiMH batteries in all my boats. I love them. They are a little cheaper than Life, a little more than SLAs, but they offer nearly the same AH-per-weight as Life. These are what I use in my cruiers: http://www.batteryspace.com/customnimhbattery6v4500mah27wh5xscw614awgwirescu-mm112pid4942.aspx I run 2 of these and never had a problem! Here is what I run in my capital ships: http://www.batteryspace.com/nimhbatterypack60v10ah5xdprewired.aspx I run 2 of these in the Moltke, 4 of them in Nagato. Many Many Many battles, never had a problem running out of juice even with 2 pumps. You could probably run 1 pack through a whole battle with something small like a pre-dread.
