Some nice work Xaphod!
I've gathered the 3DSC's collective opinion on the armament for the
Bahamūt. We actually played with the model a bit, moving boxes around to see what might work and what wouldn't. Here's what we found:
1) All the "white" guns should work fine, as per our original suggestion.
2) The rearrangement of the quarterdeck and forecastle seem quite plausible, so the "red" guns should be OK.
3) Things start getting really tight around the bow and stern however.
The ship can easily accommodate two bow chasers on the main deck, and two stern chasers in the gun room. More than that, and and either the crew doesn't have enough room to work them, or would conflict with the shape of the hull itself. While we acknowledge this is a game and
some license can be warranted in some circumstances, we all feel cramming four chasers on these decks would be a bit too much of a stretch. Thus, the "yellow" guns can be left off.
On a positive note, while it's still a bit of a stretch, we
do think it's just possible that a pirate captain could have sacrificed two gallery windows for the sake of a bit of firepower. If you want to modify the stern galleries such that a pair of guns peek out just above the counter, then the
Bahamūt could still sport four stern chasers.
4) Guns mounted on gangways amidships are an extremely modern feature. If anything, we'd like to see smaller gangways on the
Bahamūt to make her a bit more period-appropriate, as per our original suggestion in the
Leviathan's review. As such, the heaviest guns that could have and would have been mounted there are swivels, of which you could easily fit 3-4 per side. The "grey" guns can be left off, however.
5) Lastly, the "purple" guns on the orlop look like they will be too low to be feasible. You mention that they would have about two feet freeboard and that looks to be about right. That's actually less freeboard than a couple famous flops of the mid-17th century. The
Royal Katherine of 1664 was criticised by Samuel Pepys as "a great disappointment as well as some reproach to us," for "her lower ports are but three feet above the water before she hath all her provisions and guns in." Meanwhile the venerable Sir Anthony Deane's own 100-gun
Royal Charles of 1673, with somewhere around 3 feet of freeboard, was declared "a mere table" which "ships water with the least breath of wind" and which was "so crank-sided and fetched so much water in at the ports that her lower tier of guns could not be made use of." (Both quotes in Lavery's
The Ship of the Line, vol. I.)
We might consider a piratical disregard for safety if we could program weather effects that force the lower tier closed or made using them a risky proposition... but alas, we can't. No additional guns are possible below the main deck on this ship.
So to sum up, here's the final, approved gun tally for this behemoth of a
Bahamūt:
* Main deck, up to 28 guns;
* Upper deck, up to 16 guns + 8-12 swivels (you can probably find spots for these in addition to the waist)
* Bow chasers, 2 guns;
* Stern chasers, 4 guns over 2 decks;
* TOTAL: up to 44 broadside guns, 12 swivels, 2 bow chasers, 4 stern chasers.
This is
quite a lot of firepower for a converted merchant vessel, even one as large as this. She'll make a great end-game pirate ship, for those pirates looking for a heavy tank to provide some muscle to their fleet.
Happy modelling!