Slashdot Mirror
RC Battleship Combat
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.
Forget sinking other RC boats, I wanna take on the ducks in the lake outside my office!
The Aussies are going to be mighty riled when they see thier bandwidth bill and their cooked server. Just LOOK at all those HUGE (1600x1200) pictures!
--sig fault--
rc boats are cool, especially when their frequency interferes with that of an rc plane, im sure that the results are predictable. true story
I hate sigs.
are we going to have these boats running linux, with a 802.11 connection, then you play Battleship on the computer and watch it happen in real life
Jesus saves souls and redeems them for valuable cash prizes
Would it be cheating if I bombed them from my RC plane?
What, no torpedos?
Peg your opponent with ball bearings as he stands with a remote in his hands LOL!
My shit blew out my inner colon and sunk my turdboat!!!
What happens when someone straps tiny bombs onto a remotely controlled miniature replica of the B2 or some other bomber?
If a tree falls on an anonymous coward yelling 'first post' in the forest, does anybody hear?
Would it be fair to attack with an rc rowboat equiped with a tesla coil?
It would certainly be interesting...
recompile.org
I hope their server will to live fight again another day. ;)
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
Where are the lego guys controlling the ships?
You sank my battleship!!
are they one shot only cannons? or how do the cannons reload?
I found a story *exactly* like this one in the archives: here it is
Oh come on, are you going to mod me down for not trying to be funny? Or should you do the reverse? This is certainly insightful, interesting, and funny, and is not intended as flamebaiting or trolling.
- Only ships constructed between 1900-1946 may be used
- Must be constructed exactly like originals
- basically the ships armor must conform in size and purportion, with the original (model) ships
- 1. No means of delaying, or slowing down the sinking of any ship is allowed.
- only electronics may be protected by watertight compartments
THe last two rules in particular are very interesting. Most battleships where constructed as to be divided into multiple watertight comparments (much like the titantic.. only better =)) and were almost impossible to sink. Take the battleship Yamato, the pride of WWII japanese Fleet, when it went on its suicide mission against the US fleet at Okinawa it took, IIRC, somewhere around 12 torpedo hit plus a large number of bombs before she finally went down. Personally, if they are going to all the detail of building the ships why not use watertight compartments like the real ships? Sure, it would take longer to go down but at least it would give a more fair battleship vs. battleship game. The battles would likely last alot longer, yes, but at least it would be far more realistic.Otherwise, this entire exercise is fascinating, including model aircraft carrirs that can launch aircraft (!), torpedos, and the like, although it appears as though submarines have not yet been sanctioned.
In an unfortunate turn of events for Bismark captain Luke Simmons and crew, the german battleship was sunk in friendly waters just off the Bismark's home port, the dock extending 12 feet into the lake behind Capt. Simmons' summer cottage.
"He just refused to honor the rules of combat," Capt. Simmons lamented, referring to Timmy Levendowski's complete disregard for weapons conventions when forgoing mounting cannon on his own ship in favor of divine intervention from the sky in the form of airborne boulders measuring up to 3 inches across.
The Bismark was simply unable to withstand the continued barrage and sunk despite Capt. Simmons' best efforts, including a desperate call to Timmy's parents.
Timmy did not escape the encounter unscathed, however, as international condemnation from his parents after the sinking landed him trade sanctions which, among other things, withheld Timmy's weekly 6 AUD in international aid.
"It's not fair," whined Timmy, "I wanted to play and they wouldn't let me, and now I have to wait a whole 'nother week to get my new action figure. He wouldn't even let me try on his hat", referring to a replica German mariner's headpiece worn by Capt. Simmons whenever commanding his vessel.
paintball
we had non sanctioned competitions when I was younger. We floated a regular model battleship in my friends pool, then simulated a missle attack on it using bottle rockets and jumping jacks. It took those pretty well although one jumping jack did some major damage to the superstructure. Then we upgraded to roman candles - those things cut through the hull like a hot knife through butter. It still took a while to go down - we had to get a couple of shots close to the water line to get her to the bottom.
A Slashdot editor actually checked the archives before posting a story?
Way to go Michael! Teach timothy how to search the archives, please! (:
Whoever stated that signature sizes should be limited to one hundred and twenty characters can just go ahead and kiss my
Homer: You sank my scrabbleship!
Sort of.. i dont sink my ships. RC Boats re a very geek friendly hobby. i am part of a club in Ottawa, and a majority of our members are in (or retired from) Hi Tech Proffessions.
Check out www.ziobrowski.net or Rideau Nautical Modelers
A few Neat things you will see - a 10ft 1/72 scale aircraft carrer - with taxing airplanes, underwater submarine photos, constrction photos and a 1/4 scale 2 person tub boat.
How about a sneak attack just after dawn, before they're all set up?
Get 50 or so RC Plane enthusiasts to help out -
Bomb then to the bottom of the pond!
Cheers,
Jim
-- My Weblog.
The entire exercise is to have fun with relative merits reproduced, not anal realism. You go on about water tight compartments; why not fuss and bother over so many other wrongs?
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?
Infuriate left and right
I was thinking the same thing looking at this shot of the interior of a hull. When I was stationed on a ship, we were trained that the ONLY thing that kept a ship afloat in combat was watertight compartments.
The ship I was on (DDG-56) even had cross-flooding zones so if a compartment on the port was compromised, a compartment (non COMBAT essential) on the starboard would cross-flood to keep the ship level (important for guns a missle launchers).
Never never never smoke crack before geometry class!
I work as a volunteer aboard the SS Jeremiah O'Brien, a liberty like this one. The site from the story, and the things the people do, is just cool. Too bad they couldn't arm the civilian ships. There are a few documented cases of Liberties and Victories giving as good as they got during WWII.
- Akky
P.S. Please for the love of Hod forgive us for our webmaster. He's a nasty old man who thinks he's All That.
SSDS or ACDS Ships? Are they running SNEATT?? Do they have passive or active acoustics?
These are very important questions....
100% Insightful
Check out your local "Big Gun" groups.
Jouster
For anyone who has only heard of it's legendary power, you may find an actual blink tag on the site. I thought those were gone for good!
I don't know what's more amazing, the amount of work & time they've put into these ships, or the fact that such a graphics-heavy page is still viewable after having been posted on /. for almost an hour...
"The best argument against democracy is a five minute chat with the average voter."
--Winston Churchill
Damn Slashdot Effect...
IBM had PL/1, with syntax worse than JOSS,
And everywhere the language went, it was a total loss...
Normally warships would make me drool but presently I'm watching Miss Teen USA on television so I've just about run out of saliva.
I am not a lawyer but my sister is, so don't mess with me
Flood 1, ......
Open Outer Door 1,
Set run depth to 25, run time to 50.
Bearing mark, 3 2 0,
Range mark, 15,000,
Down Scope,
Up Scope,
Bearing mark, 3 2 5,
Range mark, 14,000,
Down Scope
TAO - Compute Solution,
Verify Passive,
Solution Ready,
Stand by 1,
Fire 1
Time to target - 45
Perhaps they are trying to make up for their pathethic showing in WW2.... Silly aussies. /. the server.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtian!
what about subs? when is the next announced conflagration?! don't count the stealth 'what happened' approach out!!
a r/ html/index.php
h p
http://datamax.servehttp.com
http://www.datamax.servehttp.com/PHP-Nuke-5.6.t
http://www.datamax.servehttp.com/phpBB2/index.p
*warchalktroll* beta mod me down
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.
You spend tens to hundreds of hours constructing a faithful replica of a WWII battleship. You paint it, you fuel it, you wire up the controls, you test and refine it. Then you go wreck it. So, it's sort of like RC planes?
High-speed Road Trip (18.000KPH)
Perhaps NAMBA wasn't a very good choice for the association name.
Actual projectile weapons and the threat of sinking, woo-hoo! You wouldn't need hot chicks to keep that interesting. Not that hot chicks would make it less interesting. Hot chicks... water... Yeah, I see definite possibilities here.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
ummm... just thinking about which runlevel should i run the script rc2.d/rc3.d is more entertaining.
-JAPAN: ol yor beys ar bilong tu as! -AH!
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.. 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
The ships look like WWII vessels, but the battles and the tactics involved (very close range slug-fests) seem much more like the days of wooden ships and iron men. In fact, the ships are wood and the BB's are simply tiny cannon balls. Would be fun to try this with sailing ships I think!
The coolest thing is the bb firing guns... really cool designs. I espically like the o-ring system that if you nail it with enough air pressure you can "machine-gun" your opponents.
In Decautr Illinois they have these battles every summer in one of the county parks that has a large calm and shallow pond. It's really neat to watch.
luckily they dont allow ramming, otherwise a larger ship could easily kill off everyone without too much trouble.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
If you ever read the Hornblower books, you know how exciting they made fights of sailing warships in the Napoleonic Wars.
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. A RC version would kick serious ass.
Vos teneo officium eram periculosus ut vos recipero is.
I wonder if anybody's tried RC sailing ship combat. It would be more realistic as sailing ships often battled at point blank range. Even a one-against-one battle in a smallish pond could be quite intense, the winning captain would need a lot of skill to make best use of the wind to manover into the best firing position for the killing shot.
Umm, what's the point? The idea of a submarine is that it should be hard to detect. With that antenna sticking up from the water (or how are you going to control it) it kinda defeats the purpose.. although torpedoes would be übercool.
Jesus. Yet another tool with nothing better to do then YAP about spelling...
You know, I'm just getting started out in RC plane flying and am interested in learning about dogfighting. With planes they try to cut each other's streamers. Maybe, and I don't wanna be a spoilsport, we could get the ships to work with streamers of sorts too, that way it won't cost so freakin much every round. Imagine a lake covered in ships and aircraft all trying not to (or to) crash into each other. Sign me up.
I doubt that very much. Sure the Yamato had biger guns 18" to the Iowa's 16", but the Iowa had much better gun control. The US Ships would have scored far more hits and done far more damage because of their more accurate gun control. Of course nothing is a sure thing in war -- a lucky hit can alter the balance in a heartbeat. Overall, however, Halsey was eager to take on the Yamato and Mushai with his battle fleet -- and I'm guessing he would have been the victor. If he hadn't fallen for the bluff at Leyete Gulf, we would know for sure.
I like the other way better. A ship named Prince of Whales, it just makes sense somehow.
...wearing a skin-tight topless leather jumpsuit, with cutaway buttocks and transparent crotch panel.
With torpedos. That would really make things interesting.
I don't suffer from insanity, I enjoy every minute of it.
Umm, no.
No part of your post is based on reality.
Prince Of Wales was a KGV class fast battleship constructed in the late 30s and was severely limited by the fact that no attempt was made to "get around the provisions of the Washington Naval Treaty".
All contemporary battleships had floodable voids in the hull to counter a list caused by flooding on the other side of the ship.
Prince of Wales was in fact sunk by flooding due to torpedo hits and hundreds of men died as a result. If the ship had been designed and built in violation of the Treaty limitations in anticipation of the lapsing of the Washington Treaty and the non-ratification of a follow-up treaty (As all contemporary US battleships were) then it would have most likely survived the attack that sunk it.
However it would have in no way resembled your farcical description of 'water armour'.
Hint for the retarded: Water inside the ship (assuming it's not for cooling the powerplant) is water that is sinking the ship.
Alas, with a decent amount of watertight compartments, you'd have to render a model to splinters to sink it. At least this way, a sunk sip can be repaired for a new engagement without too much effort.
Xix.
"Everything is adjustable, provided you have the right tools"
As to the Yamato, the weakpoints of a RC Warship will be different to that of the actualy ship, but they will be very real. In the historical Yamato the connection of the anti-torpedo bulkhead was a major weakpoint if I recall correctly and this is certainly not duplicated, but a Yamato is a monster to fight. We have a few building and I have been trying to work out her weak points so I can put one under with my South Dakota class battleship.
To me, at present, I see her strengths as
1) Very stead gun platform
2) Huge ability to absort damage (very big pump and huge intenal volume)
3) Very heavily armed (plenty of space to arm secondaries)
Weaknesses on the other hand
1) Slow (27 knots)
2) Stears like a brick
3) Accelerates like a brick
4) High freeboard
5) Poor depression on 'A' and 'Z' turrets (decks to wide to get decent depression)
On the other hand my Sodak has the same (scale) main battery (9 * 1/4 CO2 powere cannon), is about the same speed, has a much lower freeboard and is hugely manouverable for a battleship. In a slugfest I would certainly loose, but if I can get close inboard, under her guns, then I can likely get hits in her waterline while she is bouncing her rounds of my deck. In a few months we will find out if I am correct.
You do have to defeat her using your wits, she will make minemeat of anyone trying to just slug it out, its just her weak points are in slightly different places than the historical prototype.
Incidentally, the biggest problem with a Yamato is if one is sunk, then she is 70lb or more (plus the water inside) of shipping to pull up from the bottom of a dam and into your dingy. Quite a challenge to land her. We are still working on how to do that reliably. It does not help she is about 7 feet long either. Our dingy in Sydney is only an 8 footer. For those interested, you can find me here http://www.ausbg.org/people/richard_simpson.html or email me at webmaster@ausbg.org if you have other questions.
In "big gun", armour is proportional to historical thickness, gun caliber is proportional to historical caliber, speeds are proportional to historic speed (and much lower than small gun), pump output is proportional to displacement and you can mount as many cannon as the historic ship had. This is more "realistic" but only in a very relative sense. The overall concequence is that big ships have all the advantages in Biggun (apart from manoverability) and tend to dominate.
Both are great fun (but although they both use 1/144th scale hulls the two branches of the hobby are not interoperable)
If I were recommending to people which to choose to decome involved in, I would recommend which ever one had an existing group near to them
Smallgun is the only game in town in Canada
http://www.pittelli.com/nabs/
Biggun is the only game in town in Australia
http://www.ausbg.org
(We first tried to set up "smallgun" but could not get help - see http://www.ausbg.org/history.html
In the states you have a wide variety of choices.
The mwci site, www.mwci.org has a nice map of the states to help you find groups and there is a mob called IR/CWCC as well that is sort of national but I don't know much about them - the Canadians might.
The small gunners also have a nationals that run for a whole week and which could be a real blast.
The "big gunners" are not nationally organised in the states but there are major groups in Texas, SF, LA and near Chicago. Links to their websites (and some other nice stuff) are at www.ausbg.org/links.html.
The AusBG also has a CD we did earlier this year that has slideshows, screen savers, a copy of our website and a (MPEG-1) version of a program the Australian Broadcasting Corporation did on the battlegroup. They can be obtained from the chaps at the "Bowning Shipyards" at www.ausbg.org/BSY for a few dollars (1 USD for the CD plus postage). It sort of gives you a taste of what it is all about.
Searches on Google for "model warship combat" or "rc warship" will also tend to find losts of interesting hits.
It is only by risking our persons from one hour to another that we live
at all. And often enough our faith beforehand in an uncertified result
is the only thing that makes the result come true.
-- William James
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