Chocks away part 2

The game was intended to test the new combat mechanic I have put in place of the very basic one originally used in SPI's Flying Circus back in 1972.

Now this brings back memories

I have used what are essentially the same four damage charts, one for single or twin MGs (split between belt fed or drum fed) but don't use them to create hits on the target aircraft.  Instead once the number of 'hits' is established a second D6 is thrown if that scores the same or less than the hits a critical hit occurs.  The hits scored on the original chart are instead deducted from the pilot's resolution.  Once that drops to zero that pilot decides that discretion is the better part of valour and tries to break for home.

Like the original SPI offering aircraft are managed by a play sheet where current speed, altitude and climb progress is recorded and damage ticked off.  Each turn is 10 seconds flying time and the hexes are 60 metres flat to flat.

All aircraft models in this game are from Heroics and Ross.  The Observation balloon is scratch built.  So Chocks away and lets have at it!

The British Pair enter at the top of the 8,000 foot flight band and head straight for the Balloon at 140 KPH while climbing to 9,000.  Meanwhile the flight of Eindeckers is also looking to close on the Balloon.  They are at 7,000 feet and making maximum speed at 140 KPH and climbing.  Meanwhile the Balloon unit start winching down the Balloon but it's going to take 30 turns to get it down to earth, time they probably don't have. 

Wings gleaming in the early morning sun the British Pair close on the target

The Sopwith stays at 9,000 and continues towards the balloon while the DH2 starts to shed height steeply while turning to port (left).  The Eindeckers stay as a pair and bore straight ahead.  By turn three the Sopwith has passed the Balloon to port and is shedding height to match the Fokkers the DH2 has dived steeply to 4,000 and is lining up for a pass on the balloon.

The British split their forces laterally and vertically

The DH2 then turns hard to Starboard and takes a shot at the Balloon.  No obvious damage is seen but the Balloonatic's (the period slang for Balloon observers) resolve drops by one.  50 seconds have now elapsed.  The Sopwith dives and turns hard to port getting a firing angle on the lead Eindecker with the rear twin Lewis guns.  The lead flying around the German reduces his resolve by 4 points and more importantly scores a critical hit.  It's possible structural damage but that won't be resolved until he makes a high stress maneuver.  Meanwhile the DH2 jinks to use up airspeed and turns in towards the Balloon. 

The DH2 is lining up his attack

In an attempt to get on the tail of the DH2 the leading Fokker dives hard and is rewarded by the sound of a wing spar cracking.  No more hard maneuvers for that aircraft then.  He does get a firing solution though but doesn't hit anything vital.  DH2 pilot's resolve -1.  The Strutter fires his rear guns at the Balloon with no effect and now has to reload the Lewis gun.

Oh Bugger (in German)!

It's all hotting up now as the DH2 pilot is frantically reloading his Lewis gun and trying to jink to make the damaged Eindecker overshoot.  The Strutter solves that problem by means of a turn and throttle back to allow him to engage the damaged Eindecker with his forward armament.  Its a big hit another critical and the Fokker is left with only one of his initial 7 damage points and is trailing smoke all he can do is turn for home and hope to land before the British finish him off.  The other Eindecker is turning hard onto the DH2 and holds a height advantage ready for a diving attack next turn.  His plan is interrupted by a loud 'Woomph' as the rear gunner on the strutter, having reloaded his guns scores a critical on the Balloon which bursts into flames.  Both balloonatics bail out safely but the balloon is a goner.

The Fokkers head for home and probably a stiff talking to!

At this point the second Eindecker out numbered and with a badly damaged flight leader to take  care of turns away opens up some lateral seperation and dives for home.  The British could pursue but decide that the job is done for the day and head home for a spot of tiffin.

The control sheet and yes those are dog biscuits as markers (don't ask)

The new combat rules seem to work OK but the balloon hit was a fluke and I really should have a separate critical hit table for balloons as without incendiary bullets they were extremely difficult to bring down.  The basic air combat maneuvers need updating as the 1972 rules are a fudge to cover discrepancies between speed over the ground and actual airspeed and don't include any actual special tactical moves such as yo-yos, Immelmans or barrel rolls.  I also want some kind of rule for energy management and overspeed structural failures (those Albatri wings don't just fall off on their own you know).  More on those issues after some more reading.

World War One Air combat rules

In my last post I was waxing nostalgic for the "beer and pretzels" games of yesteryear. I suppose I should come at least partially clean, when it comes to some types of war game, simple rules are all I can manage to write.  I spent a couple of mind melting days attempting to come to grips with formulas to allow me to calculate snap turn rates and sustained turn rates from basic aircraft statistics.  It tuns out that Mrs E's oft made comment "your not as smart as you like to think you are" is more true than I like to accept because I had to give up.  I fell back on the stats one of the other members of Hull University's war gaming society came up with back in 1975.  I will try to see if I can find an easy set of correlations between the real world stats and the game stats from those and extrapolate the results for the airplanes I don't have game stats for.


My favourite WW1 flying ace.  The late great Charles M Scultz's Snoopy from Peanuts.


The rules are pretty much done and I just need to wrote them up.  The original rules Jim Dunnigan wrote for SPI's board game Flying Circus all those years ago didn't really need much adding to them.  I have simply added  energy gain in dives and loss in subsequent turns to allow "Boom and Zoom" combat to be a little more doable.  The game handles "Turn and Burn" pretty well I only needed to penalise sustained moves in tight turns with some altitude loss to make it more accurate.  The dive rules were the biggest issue but as part of the energy gain/loss rule I think I have something that will work.  Lastly I have added structural failure rules both to the combat result tables and the over speed diving rules.

All I need to do now is finish creating the game statistics for the 60 or 70 airplanes my obsessive mind set says I need to have.  Then its on to creating a game map and some height adjustable flight stands.  Then its off for a few games.  Mind you I expect it to end like this!

 

I hope they walked away from this one!

Nostalgia News

I was painting some figures a few days ago and a friend of mine came around and spotted some 1/300th biplanes in the lead pile. He was far more interested in them than any of the other figures.  That got me thinking about World War 1 dogfighting rules.  Now I know they say nostalgia isn't what it used to be, but I started thinking about some old air combat games that might have stood the test of time.

The game that came to mind was the SPI board game Flying Circus.  It was published way back in 1972.  By modern standards it wasn't a complex game and the flight mechanics are very basic but when I was at University it was a firm favourite because it was easy to teach to new players and they could get right into the action.

Back then Flying Circus was our Sunday evening group game.  It was something all the club members could join in with without too much trouble.  We put an extended map together to make a bigger playing area and created statistics for additional aircraft.  Sometimes there are unexpected benefits to having mathematicians in a wargames club.  He also created some additional rules for combat results to add some granularity to the game.  We ran a campaign where the calendar moved forward a month each week.  This gave us a way to introduce new aircraft as they became historically available.  we also had a campaign rule that meant the current highest scoring pilot on each side got first refusal on new planes.  This gave us a motivation to get stuck into the action.

A bit of digging in my archive (OK its a big cardboard box in the spare bedroom) and I found a copy of the original rules.  I ran a copy of them off back in the day so I had all the statistics for the planes that came in the game.  It still holds up as a basic starting point for a game with 1/300th models.  So its time to draw up some additional rules to create a game using models.

So now I'm into nostalgia gaming and  I think I want to play Starforce Alpha Centauri again.  Time for a trip down to the archives.