Quote:
Originally Posted by swaghauler
No need for this. Just go to BoatTrader.com and do a search for sailboats and sailing Catamarans in the 40 foot to 150-foot range. There are THOUSANDS of them in Aisa, The Mediterranean, The Carribean, Europe, and both North and South America.
These boats have modern engines, electronics, water desalinization (on larger boats), and are actually very comfortable to live aboard. Even the smaller 26ft to 40ft models can withstand around 250 kg of weapons mountings and much larger boats could mount weights of up to 2 tons. They are every bit as durable as wooden boats and most sailboats under 30ft are trailerable with a typical pickup.
Do a google search for them on the manufacturer's websites and you can even find deck plans to use in your games.
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They can take the weight, sure, but can they take the stress of the weapons actually being fired ... now, this is from something in Alistair Maclean's 'The Golden Rendevous' so it may not be entirely correct, but I would expect it's not complete BS ... in that there are comments to the effect that the pirates are mounting something almost equivalent to a 3.7" gun in the Merchie ... and the First Officer thinks/comments that they would be lucky to get off more than a couple of shots before the deck plates buckled, rendering the mount (and the weapon) useless.
Now, this is from memory, and its more than 25 years since I read it last, and don't have a copy at hand any more, but I also STR that there was a comment to the effect that some Merchant Shipping Companies were paid (or subsidised) by HMG to put in reinforced hull sections on their ships so they could take heavier guns in an emergency ... I suspect that's no longer the case, and probably wouldn't have been by TW2K.
However, I would strongly suspect the bit about ruining the deck plating would still be true ... and how many people would know that in advance?
Any Navy/Merchant Navy/Coast Guard types have any inputs here?
Phil