Forum Message
| City: | Mahomet, Il.  | | Personal Data: | Male, born: August 15 1948 | | Membership | 22years 1day ago. | | Last Login | 6years 235days ago. | | Last Move | 11years 230days ago. | Phil Hall is currently  | Send a mail to Phil Hall |
| | Message text flying_neko wrote:
Phil Hall wrote: Originally I had intended a 5 level game with different maneuvers for each level. I was always puzzled by the number of levels. An average aircraft would have a climb rate of about 1000 ft/min (886 for an Albatros D.III). This would something like 15 minutes to reach 15000 feet. I had found this page on the internet: http://pease1.sr.unh.edu/1/bluemax/designnotes.html(btw, is this yours Phil?) which says that a round is supposed to last 3-4 seconds, so it would take at least 250 full rounds to reach that altitude... if the maximum climb rate is (say) 3-4 altitude levels, this would require 1000 altitude levels or even more: (250 rounds) X (a climb rate of 4 levels)! right? Now I know that playing with 1000 altitude levels could be a problem, given what you say about the number 3 (  )... but 5 levels or even Canvas Eagles' 10 levels would be completely irrealistic! So, for the game to be more realistic, I had figured one hex should be about 500 feet long and one level about 50 feet high. I had thought of a house rule for Canvas Eagles to play with this more realistic numbers. For shooting distance purposes, 10 levels = 1 hex distance, so one could easily shoot at 20-30 levels of distance, making escaping vertically possible but not too easy. But I never playtested this... 
Oh boy. The explanation is going to get long and complex. And it may not be understandable the way I put it but here goes. Hexes don't represent distance. Huh?!! Hexes only represent speed. I know speed usually equals distance. In fact we measure speed in distance. But not in BM. An aircraft not moving is still going 90mph. And staying in the same hex. And for a WWI a/c it isn't stalling. Flying pretty fast actually. But it isn't moving in game terms. For most folks that's a tough concept to get their head around. (It was for most of the playtest group, hence we added the term "stall" to the no hex movement and made you roll for spin. If I recall correctly the intent of adding stall wasn't to force movement, but that is what it did. In the original playtest you could roll for stall and if you didn't, you could remain in the hex and rotate however many hexsides your maneuver called for. This brought up the restricted maneuver concept, which the early playtest games didn't have. That led to the non-repeatable maneuver since it was obvious that it wasn't possible to actually keep doing a 31 maneuver over and over without falling out of the sky.)
The basic concept I guess is that the aircraft don't relate to the ground but to each other. The Camel and Fokker Tripe were the first two a/c designed and all other flowed from them. The Tripe is one of the most maneuverable but also the slowest a/c in the game. Now BM is a "coarse" game due to the limitations of using hexes for movement and a constraint I placed on the game. I didn't want any a/c to move more than 3 hexes. Having played nearly every aerial war board game out there I felt that anything beyond three hexes was going to make it to hard for people to get shots at the opponent. With three hex maneuvers there aren't many places the guy in front can go that the fellow following him can't cover on his move. (Dogfights aren't about flying the aircraft, they are about out thinking your opponent. That is the base philosophy of BM). So the 3 hex limitation to movement meant that the hexes represented certain speed bands. Fortunately the a/c selected for the game fell within those bands. Then there was he SPAD XIII. Oh well. I had to violate the rule of 3 for that one.
Now that is a longwinded explanation of why hexes can't be used to represent distances, like 500 feet. There is one other design decision that affected the use of altitude. The game is, as I said elsewhere, very specific as to what it represents. In a tight turning dogfight the a/c fall out of the air. The a/c of the period are horribly underpowered in a hp to drag ratio. All the wires, shapes of fuselages, roughness of paint, shape of the cowling, cooling radiators, led to an airplane that didn't as much cruise through the air as it was dragged kicking and screaming. Pilots who have flown some of the originals and some of the accurate engined reproductions all report the same thing. Turn off the engine and you slow down quick. Particularly in a rotary. Big props not doing any propelling but just windmilling produce a lot of drag. Even under power while turning, which is not always a good idea in a rotary(usually you blipped the engine while turning since the gyroscopic effect could snap a rotary into a quick stall if it kept running at full power)the a/c falls out of the air. The Pfalz D.XII is reported by various pilots to have lost anywhere from 150 feet to 490 feet in a 180 tight turn. So altitude isn't a problem, everyone is just considered to have started at the same altitude and falls out of the sky equally. Equal falling isn't going to happen, but one other design philosophy solves that. You are considered a competent pilot of your a/c and will compensate for the quirks of your a/c as needed.
Now as for adding altitude into the game. The playtest had the 5 levels added when one of the playtesters thought we needed it. After we put it in, no one really used it. They all stayed at the same altitude to avoid the negative modifier for shooting at an a/c at a different altitude. The miniatures version of the game has 25 altitude levels. Given the amorphous nature of the hexes representing speed, the 25 altitude levels don't have to represent a (well, I have no word for this concept) difference in ability just as the hexes represent speed differences. As long as aircraft A gains or loses levels in a proper relation to aircraft B, the level difference doesn't have to represent distance as much as capability. The levels would represent spatial relationship, with the only real question being whether you are above, level or below the other a/c and what is your ability to change that relationship? And what effect does that have on your ability to put your guns on the target? The concept of the "energy fight" hadn't developed in WWI. In fact, many pilots felt that approaching an enemy machine from below and in his blind spot was better than being above him where he could see you. Billy Bishop seems to have favored this method of flying below the enemy machine and pulling up and firing into the belly. The SE5a Lewis gun was used for just this purpose by flying below and unsuspecting enemy and, while maintaining level flight, pull the gun down to the loading position and unload into the belly of the enemy a/c.
Oh dear, I've just gone off on a tangent and I'm going to use this to make notes.
Altitude rules for BM.
A\C climb and dive in relation to one another. Will have to determine just how much after researching climb rates. There are an unlimited number of levels. When firing, you must be within 3 levels vertically of the target. You fire as if one hex closer,(being above or below increase target size) but take the deflection modifier if firing from directly behind or ahead. When changing levels down pay one less fuel. You may go up two fuel/speed numbers when diving, meaning you ignore restrictions going from a speed one to a speed 3. All stall maneuvers are speed 0 and cost no fuel points. You must lose altitude on the turn following a stall(exception: this does not apply to the Fok. D.VII) When diving S you lose levels equal to the speed number.When performing S maneuvers you must note any altitude change you intend on your movement sheet. You may only climb straight ahead. When you move and change the facing of the a/c from the original facing, lose one level for each hexside turned. When performing maneuvers 29S2 you may gain or lose 1-3 altitude levels, your choice of how many. When performing 32S3 or 33S3 you gain altitude. When performing 36 or 31 there is no loss or gain of altitude.
I would suggest putting arrows beside the maneuvers on the charts indicating the allowed altitude changes with a small number indicating the loss or gain.
Do you know anyone out there willing to playtest these Face to Face and report back to me on how they work?
In response to the website question, it is totally the work of Allan. He was an enthusiastic player and did the design work on the early war a/c for the miniatures rules.
I'm sorry if I seemed to step on your ideas. I didn't mean to, but your suggestions stimulated a brainstorm that just wouldn't quit. That hasn't happened in a long time vis a vis BM. I'm not sure how the ideas I have presented would work, and yours might be better, playtesting both will tell.
|
|
|
|
|
Donate
Leagues
Gonzaga
Blue Max
Cartagena
Wooden Ships...
King Me!
VampiRing
