Dreadnought Challenge (1906-1920) [CLOSED]
Welcome to the Dreadnought Challenge!
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Important information here:
The goal of the challenge:
In this challenge, your task is to build a dreadnought (or super-dreadnought) type battleship from the era of 1906-1920. The build can be fictional or replica as well.
Your build must reflect the characteristics of a dreadnought and also reflect the era (so don't add missiles, helipads or other modern things)
Many dreadnoughts were not scrapped after WW1, and some even made it till the end of WW2. These ships went through some modernizations.
You can make refitted dreadnoughts but only up until 1940s level of modernization and your design still has to reflect it was made between 1906-1920 and was only later modernized (If you need examples, look up: USS Arizona, USS Nevada, HMS Valiant, HMS Warspite).
Battlecruisers (examples: HMS Tiger, HMS Repulse, SMS Derfflinger) are allowed but not recommended. (they can only be honorable mentions and cant get to the top three)
What is a dreadnought?
A dreadnought (named after the famous HMS Dreadnought, launched in 1906) is a large sized battleship, with a uniform main battery (meaning that its main guns are all the same caliber) and much better propulsion than it's predecessors (called the pre-dreadnoughts) along with other important changes.
How to enter?
Download this cockpit and start making a dreadnought. When you are finished, upload it as a public post and make sure to tag me so that I won't miss it
Deadline
The deadline is 2023, July 1st (Saturday) 23:59 CET
Rules
- Must be a successor of this post (if you accidentally upload it as not a successor, contact a mod to reset it as a successor)
- Must be a new build (meaning that already posted builds are not allowed)
- Must reflect the era (missiles and other modern equipment disqualifies an entry. However, you can use hidden jet engines if you don't know how to make a realistic propeller, you can also use gyros if you don't know how to make realistic steering etc.)
- Must be a public build
- Must be uploaded and published within the deadline
- The part count ceiling is around 2500. Ideally, you'd want to keep it below 1800. However, making a 2500+ entry won't be disqualified and still has a chance to be an honorable mention. It just won't make it into the top 3
UPDATE on the last rule: Passing over 2500 can still make your build be qualified to get into the top three, it will simply lose some points (see the pinned comment for details)
Prizes
1st place: 5 spotlights and 20 upvotes
2nd place: 3 spotlights and 10 upvotes
3rd place: 1 spotlight and 5 upvotes
Honorable mention: 1 spotlight and 1 upvote
Every other entry: 1 upvote guaranteed
Note: if the winners don't have enough posts for the prizes to be properly handed out (e.g. if the 1st place winner only has 13 posts in total) then as many will be given as possible
Judgement criteria
Your designs will be judged based on the following points:
Authenticity: Whether or not your dreadnought (if you made a fictional design) authentically reflect the era. This is a bit vague description but imagine it like this: If your design would be put among a bunch of real life dreadnought ships and doesn't stand out too much, then you did a good job.
Again: you can make designs that are refitted in ww2, but make sure that your ship looks like a refitted dreadnought and not a ww2 built fast-battleshipDetail-to-partcount ratio: It's recommended to find a good balance between your level of detail and your part count. Having a design that is only 50 parts but looks like a floating brick is no good, but having a design where every rivet is modeled but has 30000 parts is also not good.
I recommend trying to use creative solutions, creative part usage to make your ship more detailed while not wasting too many partsFunctionality: What's the point of a ship if it can't be used. The minimum functionality I require is for the ship to be able to move and steer, and at least its main guns be usable. However, if you can pack more functions in it, it can make your design better.
To list a few examples: usable secondary guns, bridge interior, airplane catapults with airplanes (note that they were very basic in the era. search up how an battleship's airplane catapult looked like in ww1), waving flags, lights and so on. This list is just a few things that came to my mind but you can add anything else if you have any other ideas.+1 Story: If you build a fictional ship, a nice story or service history in the description would boost your post.
Helpful guidelines
The general characteristics of a dreadnought
- Hull: Dreadnoughts are large and chonky. Their hulls are quite wide compared to other types of vessels, and they are often made even wider with additional torpedo bulges (these are additional armour below the waterline, along the side of the ship to provide extra protection against torpedoes)
The top view of the HMS Royal Oak perfectly shows how wide these ships are and you can clearly see the additional torpedo bulges on the sides
- Main battery: Early dreadnoughts had quite experimental turret layouts. These ships would often have so called wing turrets, that as the name suggests, weren't in the centerline but were pushed to the side of the ship. Later dreadnoughts had their turrets in the centerline, but some of them had turrets amidships (meaning, the turret was in the middle of the ship with superstructure in front of and behind them, these turrets could only fire sideways)
Dreadnought main batteries most commonly had 2 guns per turret, with some rarer cases having 3 guns per turret.
Some examples:
IJN Kawachi with 4 wing guns (2 on each side) and only 2 centerline guns
HMS Iron Duke with 2 turrets forward, 2 aft, and a turret amidships
USS Colorado with a standard 2 turrets forward, 2 turrets aft layout, this was the most common on late dreadnoughts
- Masts: Most dreadnoughts feature at least one but usually two tall masts. These masts can either be pole masts, tripod masts (basically a pole mast but has two additional legs sticking out) or cage masts (as the name suggests, these look like large, tall cages) with some kind of observation post at the top of them.
Some examples:
SMS Nassau with two pole masts
USS Oklahoma with two tripod masts
USS Arizona in the 1920s with two cage masts
- Unusual designs: of course, a few ship designers decided to go on their own paths and create ships that are very unique and different from other ships. You can try making such a design as well.
Some examples:
Imperatritsa Mariya class battleship with all her guns on the centerline and on the same level
HMS Agincourt with 7 turrets, the largest number of main turrets on a battleship ever
Specifications
Spotlights
- EternalDarkness 1.8 years ago
- Tang0five 1.8 years ago
- RicardoACE 1.4 years ago
- TatsuTheOtaku 1.8 years ago
General Characteristics
- Successors 10 airplane(s) +2880 bonus
- Created On Windows
- Wingspan 1.6ft (0.5m)
- Length 3.3ft (1.0m)
- Height 1.6ft (0.5m)
- Empty Weight 551lbs (250kg)
- Loaded Weight 551lbs (250kg)
Performance
- Wing Loading N/A
- Wing Area 0.0ft2 (0.0m2)
- Drag Points 127
Parts
- Number of Parts 1
- Control Surfaces 0
- Performance Cost 4
Winners post: >>clicky<<
Attention!
I made a slight rule change: entries that have more than 2500 parts will NOT be disqualified anymore. Instead, they will simply lose points in the final scoring. This will be done in the following way:
For each time the part count passes 2500, five points will be deducted from the score. Here are a few examples;
- partcount 2501-5000 = -5 points
- partcount 5001-7500 = -10 points
- partcount 7501-10000 = -15 points
And so on.
Dear participants! Please make sure that your entry is built upon the challenge cockpit so that it will be a successor. If it's not, you can fix it by saving your already built ship as a subassembly, and then load up the challenge cockpit, and place the subassembly on it.
Alternatively, you could try asking a moderator after you uploaded the build to set your post as a successor to the challenge post.
Here's the list of participants I know of so far. If you are sure you want to join too, just let me know and I'll add your name as well:
- ShiroNeko - Vanitatum-class Dreadnaught, Vanitatum
- natemomog - Agamemnon class Battleship
- PapaKernels - USS Pennsylvania BB38
- Weissenwaltz - Sms Wilhelmshaven
- MentallyDistorted - Bretagne class Dreadnought
- Ayanon - IJN Fusou
- Oukarine - BB-1890
- Fineilldoitmyself - SMS Konig
- UnmanagedReservoir - RNVS Vengeance
- Yeetthehen - USS Good morning USA Freedom class Dreadnought
- LocalDealer - SMS Bayern
- Seredamia - HIVNS Sun yu
- Hiimakeplanes - HMS Incomparable 1915
- BacchaNIKI - Hida class Battleship
- Nitsu - HMS Indestructible
@Nitsu I'm hoping to finish the evaluation by the end of the week but I dont want to make any promises, although my next week is fully free so if I cant finish it by the end of this week, I think I'll surely be able to by the end of the next one.
As for upvotes, no, they don't influence the scoring at all
@BMilan when are your estimates for the resulting winner to come out ? Also since the posts had been made, upvotes have been given by other peoples, does upvotes influence the scores ?
@BMilan ok thanks
@Yeetthehen The evaluation of the entries is still in progress, I purposefully haven't tested any of them until the challenge was over to not be biased.
So who is the winner???
@Samflugzeugpanzer No worries, thanks for letting me know
I will be not be able to post anything because the I did not like the ship I was working on reset it back down to it hull and then lost motivation I’m truly sorry
@ThatIsKrazyMan Is there a chance you could finish it if you were given a little extension to the deadline? (lets say a week maybe?)
@BMilan bad news bro, i can't make it sorry, because im being offline
@Seredamia oh I just realized you are Kayoko lol
@Seredamia Of course! but you gotta hurry, there is only 16 days left. Good luck!
can I join?
@LocalDealer Of course, sorry I forgot to add you to the list, my mistake
uhh
am i still allowed to join?
@Yeetthehen added to the list
Can I join??
@PapaKernels I'd say try Vincent or BaconAircraft, I tried them last time and one of them helped (not sure which one of them as they didn't reply just silently set the successor)
@BMilan ok, i shall try. Idk which mod to ask, most of the time successors haven't happened for me.
@PapaKernels Can you please ask a mod to set it as a successor (it was one of the challenge requirements). It looks great btw, Im looking forward to test it! :D
This is my entry
@BMilan lol, thanks. Just gotta get some help with screenshots 😂. Did free build the masts as 1 mast alone would have been 200+ parts lol. For not doing a ship with blueprints before and being under 600 parts its pretty damn good in my opinion.