Phil Hall wrote:
If you want to know how to determine the hits, here's how it was done,...
Fuel. 12 1/2 boxes per half hour of endurance.
... Feel free to ask questions.
OK, I will.  First, like most others that haunt this site, I love Blue Max!! I can't think of any other game I have (and I have a lot) that even comes close to BM in terms of play value. Although, I must admit I almost didn't get it way back in 1983(?) because initially I thought it looked too simplistic, but I loved the counters and having all of a plane's moves illustrated on a single page seemed like a great idea so I got it and am very happy I did. It's been a lot of fun over the years and now I can play it online too. (Thanks YouPlay!) Anyway, back to my questions....
Since the game represents a 1 -2 minute dogfight, why use endurance as the basis for fuel? I mean, either you have adequate fuel to engage the enemy or you don't (and you probably try to avoid the fight). Why not just set the limit at, say, 50 fuel for everyone? Just wondering what your rationale was.
The fuel cost of a move is also the speed of the move. This creates some weird situations such as this: a "fast" plane and a "slow " plane are in the same hex with the same facing....both do a 2S move (one 2S1, the other 2S2) and move forward one hex, again with the same facing. The "fast" plane gets to hammer the "slow" one at range zero due to the "speed difference". My question is why are "slow" planes penalized by having a higher fuel cost/speed for the same maneuver? Why not have all 2S moves be 2S1 instead of some being 2S2? Likewise for other non-restricted maneuvers.
The extra fuel penalty for being "slow" also leads to some rather unusual flying behavior. For instance, rather than flying straight forward at a presumeably (fuel) economical cruising speed and doing 2S moves, some planes are better off "waddling" through the air by alternating 10R/10L or 11R/11L moves. Alternatively, fuel economy for "slow" planes can actually be improved (over simply cruising straight ahead) by speeding up! These situations seem counter-intuitive to me, so I'm curious why this is the case.
Thanks for taking the time to answer all these questions (and for creating such a great game!), Phil. Looking forward to your response.
Craig
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