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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!
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 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?
Where are the lego guys controlling the ships?
are they one shot only cannons? or how do the cannons reload?
- 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
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.
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
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.
Like the guy above said there are separate frequencies for land and air models. 75 and 78 mhz respectively. With 27mhz reserved for toy radio control models, like those sold at toys-r-us. In addition the frequencies are segmented into channels, (I think 100 now, they changed things in 91) model airplane and boat clubs use boards which list the frequencies everyone is on. Generally things work out, at my club most of us pick a certain channel and the other guys do the same. Still, I keep a second set of crystals in my field box.
Could Jesus microwave a burrito so hot that he himself could not eat it? HS
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)
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
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 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.
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.
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"
Interesting. Shouldn't the yamato have a larger (Scale) gun considering her main guns where 18.1" inches?
I also got to thinking about how a smaller battleship (such as your s. dakota) could defeat her and all I could think of would be out-manouvering her using hit-run tactics. You are lucky in that respect since the s. dakota, with her short hull, has an excellent turning radius and good acceleration if she is somewhat lacking in armor/sea worthiness.
If the yamato does turn that slow it should be possible, now never piloted one of these things so i am probably totally wrong, but using the S. Dakota's higher speed/acceleration/smaller turning radius a series of hit/run on her stern should prove quite effective especially if you can damage her electronics/propellors/rudders. If you killed her rudder or damaged her props or ability to accelerate/manevoure in any way, shape, or form that would probably be the end of that battle. This would also limit the damage she could do to you. But if the yamato could get a nice broadside on you it would be over. Basically, if I where fighting that battle I would go balls-to-the-wall and use all the speed I had to try and out-manevoure her and do everything I could to prevent her from concentrating all 9 guns on me.
Your strategy has merit (and probably more than mine since I have never fought one of these things before) but I personally think it would be suicide, by the time you got in that close to be below her gun's she would have caused near-fatal damage to your craft. Also, as soon as you start taking on water you start to lose your speed/manevoure advantage.
7 ft long and 70 lbs, that would be quite a monster to pull out even with a floatation device, didn't even think about that part.