RC Battleship Combat 127
Tuna_Shooter writes "For you war buffs... These people have a LOT of free time on their collective hands...." I thought Slashdot had done a story on this hobby, but I don't see it in the archives. The RCWarships site is probably the best place to start.
Re:How do they reload? (Score:1, Informative)
They are pragmatists (Score:5, Informative)
Real battleships seldom fought at less than 10,000 yards (5 miles). These things are fighting at less than a ships length apart! Long range duels involve long delays between aiming/firing and results, plunging fire, precise aiming, radar, haze and good or bad optics, weather conditions, multiple ships and the fog of war. Why not require optics and radar and relays to shore based units to duplicate all these?
Different forms of armor. Real battleships had different thicknesses of armor in different places, at different angles, and different materials. There was side armor, sometimes one armored bulkhead, sometimes several. There was deck armor, sometimes several layers, sometimes a single one. Conning towers, turret armor (which differed on the front, sides, top, and backside, not to mention the barbette), there were magazines, fuel oil to catch on fire, boilers to explode, damage control parties. Heck, throw in crew expertise, training, naval doctrine, individual commander's expertise.
Unrealistic ammunition and guns. Battleship guns usually could fire one or two salvoes a minute, more or less. There were full charges which wore down gun barrels faster, low charges, high explosive vs armor piercing shells, delayed action fuses, duds. The Japanese developed a shell with a better underwater trajectory which got hits which otherwise would have missed. They also had the long range oxygen powered Long Lance torpedo which had the side effect of killing several Japanese cruisers when their torpedo storage was hit in battle.
In short, watertight compartments miss the point. The rules are designed such that small ships have a proportional chance of sinking bigger ships, and that's about it. It's all about reasonably cheap and accurate fun, not about realism down to the nth degree. Once you start worrying about watertight compartments, you are lost. My carrier, USS Midway CV-41, missed WW II by 10 days and would be eligible for these contests. She has 4000 watertight compartments, 12 boiler rooms, 4 engine rooms. How much of that do you want to duplicate?
And for those outside Australia (Score:1, Informative)
Jouster
what happens after they sink? (Score:3, Informative)
How do you recover a sunken vessel ?
Each vessel carries a float which is attached to the vessel's hull by a long line. When the vessel sinks, the float will (normally) pop to the surface, bringing one end of the line with it. As the other end is securely attached to the hull, pulling in the line will retrieve the vessel from the depths. Sometimes the float does not fully deploy or the line is too short and the vessel has to be dragged for. No vessel in the AusBG has ever been permanently lost and vessels have sunk in water more than 20 feet deep.
Re:Interesting Hobby (Score:1, Informative)
And these are *watertight* compartments, not high bulkheads. An iceberg collision doesn't sink a battleship.
Re:Cheating? (Score:0, Informative)
buy this [horizonhobby.com]
Model Warship Combat, Inc. (Score:5, Informative)
Imagine my shock at seeing the "magnificent obsession" on Slashdot! You may say I'm into this hobby a bit. For more information, be sure to check out Model Warship Combat, Inc. [mwci.org]. Easily the most organized and largest group of model warship combat enthusiasts on the planet. The only organization with a national rule set so people can battle each other under the same rules no matter where they travel from. The MWC even has their own insurance and they're incorporated to boot!
For anyone who is curious, the hobby actually started in Abilene, TX during the summer of 1978 when two bored yokels decided to see if they could sink a plastic model of a ship by taking turns firing at it from shore with a BB gun. Needless to say, shortly after that they were successful in mounting a cannon on a radio controlled ship. The rest is history.
-V
Forget This--I want FIGHTING SAIL (Score:3, Informative)
WWI/II era ships are too easy. You can steer them in any direction you want, and the damage is probably too tiny to see (it's confined to the small hull).
Why not build some serious fighting sail, like the HMS Victory (in history, commanded by the most famous and victorious commander in his day, Admiral Horatio Nelson), and pit it against America's jewel, the USS Constitution. Constitution never lost a battle, and, in its last battle against two British ships, did such incredible manoevers such as putting a sailing ship in reverse, and going on to disabling and capturing both ships (War of 1812, Constitution v. Cyane and Levant). For the Star Trek geeks, why do you think that Gene Roddenberry called the original USS Enterprise-type starships the Constitution Class? Gene knew history.
Fights like these would show holes in the sails, masts getting blasted off, and your weapon choices would be better--some cannon can be armed with chain shot (two cannonballs connected by a chain to rip a mast off) or even doubleshotting (two cannonballs shot from the same cannon for short-range destruction). Too bad you can't simulate men on board, or you could even have a boarding and have men duke it out topside.
I loved a PC game that simulated great sail battles pretty accurately--Age of Sail II. [talonsoft.com] A RC version would kick serious ass.
Re:Forget This--I want FIGHTING SAIL (Score:2, Informative)
Ol' Ironsides was tough, but she wasn't invulnerable. Victory would have handily dispatched her in single combat.