Category Archives: Outliers

World of Warships Videos

So I’ve been playing World of Warships for a while now, and it’s recently encouraged me to make some videos.

It’s not that I haven’t made videos before: J and myself have shot plenty of footage of LEGO models and various other projects, but the corresponding videos have just been clips spliced together with some transitions. The WoWS videos range from slightly to somewhat more complicated.

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USS Melvin Part 4

Yes, it’s been three years since the last part was posted, but after quite a hiatus I suddenly felt like working on the Melvin, and as such she is getting a Part 4.

When I “completed” the model in 2013 I intentionally left off the deck railing because I thought it would be insanely fiddly to assemble and it would deform due to the flexing of the deck when opening and closing the ship (to access the internals).

But I decided I was finally up for the challenge of fiddling with the railing, and having run the ship multiple times since 2013, I had become confident that deck flex would not affect the railing. So I busted out some string and super glue and got to work.

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USS Melvin Part 3

I was only planning on having three posts for the USS Melvin saga, but at this point I really do need four to document all the crap that’s gone on with this thing. I last left off after the Melvin’s first real test run, which unfortunately took place in much less than ideal conditions. Nonetheless, I was able to determine that the performance was pretty good and that the boat was a little too heavy with four D batteries.

Thus, the first of many modifications were made.

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USS Melvin Part 2

Previously I left off on the abysmal performance of the stock drivetrain, but let’s talk about the modeling aspect of this project before going back. Last time I suggested that plastic modeling was about fitting parts and sticking parts, and J elaborated that it’s about compensating for deficiencies in the manufacturing process.

Of course, there are some deficiencies that you can’t really fix, such as the very clearly misaligned molds that made the above part. The offset is less than a millimeter, but when the part is only a couple millimeters in diameter, it’s pretty significant.

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