Yes, I finally made a boat. Just this once, probably… I wanted to try it, at least. And it seems I picked one with a pain-in-the-ass hull and superstructure. Ah well… I believe it turned out OK; you be the judge.

Brief history

As early as the 1920’s, German naval command decided they needed a class of small, fast “submarine chasers”, able to operate in North Sea conditions. This was one of the classes of ships not regulated by the Versailles treaty; the final result was a scaled-down warship –based on the hull design of a private yacht- with the ability to engage and destroy vessels of any class.

The last version of these “Schnellboote” (fast boats) was the S-100 class of 1943. It was still of a mostly wooden construction, since wood was light, flexible and reliable. The cabin of the S-100 class (the “kalotte”, as it was called) was armored with 12 mm steel plated, providing decent protection against bullets and shrapnel. With its three Daimler-Benz diesel engines the S-100, although heavy for a torpedo boat, could reach a speed of almost 43 knots (approx 80 km/h).

The S-100 Class looks sleek, futuristic and menacing compared to its contemporaries like the British “Vosper”, and although the S-100 had twice the displacement it managed to be faster and just as agile as smaller boats.

Today, only a single boat (the S-130) of the approx. 200 built survives, and is under restoration.

The build

I didn’t really want to build boats, cars, tanks or whatever in SP. After some idle tinkering, I found that SP’s water physics are, ehm, strange to say the least; boats generally don’t seem to behave like boats, which is kind of a showstopper. Still, the S-100 Class looks cool and so I tried to build one.

Since it’s a smallish boat, I decided on a lot of detail, and the typical armored bridge and wheelhouse were copied as realistically as possible based on what details I could dig up. The result looks convincing enough, and the boat has details down to silly things like opening doors and armored shutters, the Kent clearview screen of the wheelhouse (anecdote: in its rather famous 1:35 model kit, Italeri turned this into a ventilator!), real “chains” in the railings and much more. It makes for a relatively high part count of course, and I’m sure a lot of stuff could be stripped for a “low part”-version, which anyone is welcome to make if interested.

The hull is… well… close enough, I suppose. Not 100% what it should be perhaps, but visually it’s definitely the S-100, even under the waterline. One false note are the propellers; they don’t always turn, since SP engines and water are a bad combo. I tried faking it with endless spinning rotators, but that resulted in weirdly jerky props so I decided against it. No matter; SP doesn’t allow you to look under water anway –not without mods.

Controls

The boat is controlled –of course- from the wheelhouse. The wheel, throttle levers and a few switches and buttons are VR-capable.

• Throttle : Trim slider (up=forward, down=reverse, center=stop) or VR throttle levers
• Steering : Roll
• AG 1 : opens the torpedo tubes (VR switch on the bridge)
• AG 2 : opens the armored shutters of the wheelhouse (VR switch inside wheelhouse)
• AG 3 : closes the doors of the bridge/wheelhouse and raises the bridge splash screens
• AG 4 : reload torpedo tubes (VR switch on the bridge)
• AG 5 : chucks the naval mines overboard
• AG 8 : lights
• Yaw : rotate the selected cannon
• VTOL : elevation of the selected cannon

There’s not much to be said about driving the boat; it’s simple and fairly fast. Just play around with it a bit, there’s nothing to it… I didn’t make things complicated.

The S-100 was a torpedo boat, and so its primary armament usually consisted of standard G7a torpedoes, although other types could be used as well. A special, 44-knots version of the G7a was intended to make life easier on the S-boot crew; after all, launching a standard 30-knots torpedo from a boat going 40+ knots would be a dangerous business indeed. Torpedoes are best launched from the bridge’s torpedo aiming view, where the player has the necessary VR-buttons and indication lamps. But nothing’s stopping you from going arcade and just launching in Chase view of course ;)

Port or starboard torpedoes have to be selected separately; only after both tubes have been fired, you can reload them by hitting AG 4.

Additionally, the S-100 had a fine complement of light artillery, consisting of naval versions of 2cm and 3.7cm Flak guns; all these guns were manually operated, loaded from clips rather than belts, and of a simple and sturdy design. They proved quite effective against airplanes and (modestly armored) ships. I didn’t bother with a system using clips; reloading by the gun crew was done so fast that almost continuous firing could be maintained until they ran out of clips -these guns didn’t fire so rapidly that they could overheat. Each cannon has a separate camera view, and each is equipped with a joystick to make it VR-controllable. Without VR gear, just rotate your guns with Yaw controls, and adjust the elevation with the VTOL slider. And try not to shoot your own boat…

The S-100 could carry depth charges or naval mines on racks at its stern. Depth charges in SP are useless, since bombs won’t go off under water. And so I cooked up some mines, more for show than anything else. These things are indeed explosive, but dropping stuff randomly and hoping someone with run into them doesn’t exactly make for thrilling gameplay. Hit AG5 to automatically drop your mines (make sure you’re moving at a decent pace before doing so) and AG5 again afterwards to put the mine rack back in its normal position, although it’s not really necessary.

That’s all folks!

I hope you enjoy fooling around with my one attempt at making a ship –or rather, boat. I’m sure the ship adepts will have loads of constructive criticism and will find a few glitches since I didn’t do a proper “shakedown cruise”, but at least I had a good laugh putting this thing together. And it kinda fits with my tradition of making accurate replica’s.

HAVE LOADS OF FUN ! ! !