R/C Naval Combat

Its pretty easy to create new scenarios involving transports. Here's a few that I just came up with.

Name: Transport Football
Teams: Red and Blue teams, as evenly balanced as possible, and a single brave transport, hereafter referred to as the Ball.
Scene/Layout: Separate ports for Red and Blue teams, along with a convoy course that takes about 5 minutes per lap.
Time Limit: If desired, or until the Ball is sunk
Objectives: score points by maneuvering the Ball around the convoy course and into the other team's port, or by sinking the Ball.

Setup: Both the Red team and Blue team start in their respective ports. The Ball starts halfway between the ports, and has a 2" by 2" (or similar) target on deck that, when shot, indicates it has been hit then resets. An example may be a metal plate that pings when hit, or a 2" foam cube that falls off when shot, then is automatically reset. The Ball starts out on Lap 2, with neither team in possession.
Gaining possession of the ball: In order to gain possession of the Ball, a ship must close to within approximately 3 feet of the ball and then shoot the target on the deck of the Ball. When this happens, the team that shot the target gains possession of the Ball, and the Ball attempts to score for the team in possession.
Laps: The Ball completes a lap by going once around the course in a specific direction. If it goes around one way, upon completion it gains a lap. If it goes around the other way, it loses a lap. Once the Ball is at lap 4 or lap 0, it may score two points by entering the opposing team's port. Blue port may be entered at lap 0, and Red port may be entered at lap 4. note: laps are this game's equivalent to yards.
scoring: If the Ball completes sufficient laps and enters a team's port, then the team in possession gains 2 points. Upon scoring, all ships reset and return to their starting positions. The team that does not have possession of the Ball may attempt to sink the Ball, and in so doing score 1 point and end the game. The team with the highest amount of points wins.

Name: Frogman Mission
Teams: Axis and Allied, or Red and Blue, whatever you usually battle with
Scene/Layout: whatever you usually battle with, plus a convoy course that can be completed in a reasonable amount of time.
Time Limit: whatever you usually battle with
Objectives: whatever objectives you usually battle for, either sinks or points
Description/Background: Each team gets a single small transport, code-named Arthur and Scire. These ships are carrying a payload of human torpedoes with which to attack enemy shipping. Each ship must complete the convoy course before it may attack with its human torpedoes. Once a ship has completed its convoy course, it may attack any enemy ship by touching the target with its bow. If it succeeds in attacking an enemy ship with human torpedoes, then that ship is scored as sunk. the transports may only attack one opponent each in this way. This attack does not affect the targeted warship in any way, other than its value in sink points. If the targeted warship is really sunk later on, that is scored as a separate sink.

Anyway, thats all for now. If I think of more I'll add them. tell me what you think.

Here's another variant of "Island Assault" with Transports....

Name: Transport Island Assualt
Teams: Whatever you normally use
Scene/Layout: basic pond, 1 dock for each team, and 1 island in the middle
Time Limit: whatever. 60 mins is good, but can be lengthened or shortened.
Objectives: take the island.

Description: First of all, you dont necessarily have to have an armed island to run this one, a basic island is fine. Here's how this works. Cargo ships are assigned a "Cargo Point Value". EX: Liberty Ship = 10,000 tons cargo. Do this for all of the cargo ships you have based loosely on overall displacement. (if you can find the actual numbers that helps too).

When battle begins the island in the middle is "disputed". All Cargo ships are "loaded down". The idea is that the cargo ships will haul a#$ to the island, and park at the shore of the island for 30 seconds (to simulate unloading troops and supplies). Once the unloading is complete, then the transport will return to the dock. It will sit at it's own dock for 30 seconds (to simulate taking on another load of supplies) and then return to the island and "unload" once more. The Transports repeat this process as many times as they can during the time limit.

Here's how this works. The contested island has no points on it. Team A delivers 2 liberty ships (10,000 each) to the island. They now have 20,000 points worth of "combat supplies" on the island. Team B delievers 3 liberty ships (for a total of 30,000) of material to the island. Team A's 20,000 cancels out 20,000 of team B's total, but Team B still has 10,000 supply points on the Island. Team B controls the island until Team A can deliver more cargo points than they have to it. This is an effective way to simulate ground troops fighting over an island and really puts the value back in the cargo ships. Another way that you could run this is just keep track of how many points were delivered to the island by each team and the team that delivered the most cargo points to the island wins. The cargo points could represent people, or foodstuffs, or ammo, or whatever. The long and the short of battle is that without supplies you cant win. This one is loads of fun and you have to remember that it's really not about sinking the other teams battleships so much as it is keeping their battleships away from your transports and putting thier transports down.