When you were a kid, did you ever throw rocks at a stick in the water? Or were you more inventive and used aluminum cans as your target? Some of us ended up building small model boats just so we could shoot at them with BB guns and sink them.

Fortunately, kids grow up. They become doctors, politicians, retailers, engineers and software developers. Does this mean they stop playing games? NO! It just means that the games become more expensive and complex!

Model Warship Combat is a safe and organized way for people to build, battle and sink model ships. This is done by using a set of detailed rules for building ships so that they may be sunk by low speed bb guns carried on board.

Ships are assigned a number of units depending on their size and relative effectiveness in battle. A light crusier will get 2.5 units while a WWI battle ship might get 4.5 and a WWII battleship 6 to 8 units. The units can be used for a mixture of guns and pumps. A gun with 50 rounds is worth 1 unit. A gun with 75 rounds is worth 1.5 units. A pump with a 1/8" opening is a 1 unit pump.

The speed of the ships is limited by the orignal length of the ship. Shorter ships can turn faster but have a lower speed. Longer ships can move faster but can't turn as quickly.

A combat warship is controled by a radio control system carried in a waterproof box. The pump and motors are driven by a battery. The gun system is powered by a small CO2 cylinder with a pressure regulator and small valves operated by the radio. Eighty five percent of the side of the hull is coated with very thin balsa wood. The internal componets are protected from the BB's by internal armor.

Since the ships are a relatively small scale ( 1 inch = 12 feet ), and get battered by BB's on a regular basis, the level of detail used in the construction is quite modest. The ships look good from 10 to 15 feet away but as you get closer, the limited and battered detail becomes obvious. The emphasis is on battling the ships, details and appearance are nice but secondary.