realistic Climb/Dive and Bank

[johnbiggles]

I played my first game of WGS with Brambo last night. two PRU Mk1 Spits, v two Bf 110s.
Mission parameter me, photograph railway sidings and return, Brambo, shoot me down.
Run 1, no altitude, result one plane managed to photograph target, both Spits shot down, German victory.
Run 2, Altitude. I'm reading the rule book, Brambo is slightly confused as he solo's with simplified rules.
I cross the coast with 1 at Alt 9 and 2 at Alt 5.
Brambo Alt 7, and 6.
Spit 1 takes two snaps lengthways, reverses, snaps a third, and beetles for home
Spit 2 gets lightly peppered by rear gun if one 110 on the way in, takes low level snap, gets chased by 110, overdives and crosses the coast smoking with 4 point left.
conclusion, Altitude rules as written are no good. (language over coffee at the bar slightly stronger)

I have not done any solo missions in WW2, or seen Daves rules, I can only go by what I remember from the conversation last night.

proposal:- Daves idea of using white turns as climbs and blue turns as dives excellent. combine with climb counters for climbs, stick with dive a level in one manouvre.
to operate, place the climb/dive card as appropriate below speed indicator on dashboard face up to indicate manouvre, use fast speed indicator to climb, but move short arrow to climb. For dive, show dive card, and move blue arrow. This should give a more realistic "enemy below, break left and attack" and "Hun in the sun , break right and climb to meet them"

must continue later, have to take SWMBO shopping

Ok, the above rules would mean that an aircraft with climb rate 5 would take 5 moves to climb a level instead of the ten it takes currently.
Also proposed is that to speed things up even more would be to give fighters a climb rate of 2, heavy fighters 3 and bombers 4. I think this would be for multi aircraft/ escort type missions. Straight dog fighting, eg BoB you would want to keep the climb rate differential.

Further to this, steep dives; declare a steep dive, use white arrow for dive, but take an A damage (stress).
Two steep dives in succesion, roll D6,1-3 ok, 4-6 flat spin, loose three levels, take a C damage, and roll D6 for direction of flight based on Hex, eg 1=forward 2= 30deg right, 3= 60 deg right and so on.

Lastly, my apologies if someone else has already posted the same idea, and any and all comments critiques etc most welcome

[Brambo]

We had fun last night but found the Ares official altitude rules very restrictive. Having looked throught my archives I found Dave's rules for WGF which are great and I'm sure a member adapted them for WGS but now I can't find them or remember who! So any help whould be really appreciated. Thanks for a great game John and highlighting these problems.

[johnbiggles]

Further to going in to a spin, I didn't go into enough detail there,
When you end up in a spin, the three level drop takes three manouvres, when you can plan nothing, move is lose a peg/level, no firing.
Fourth manouvre is a long straight again no firing

[CappyTom]

Good ideas and keep them coming. I came up with one using the speed markers. Add 1 more Slow and 1 more Fast marker but put a orange dot on them. When you use them instead of the regular speed markers you are climbing or diving. Orange slow is climbing and an Orange fast is diving. This way you can climb and dive while doing turns and such. If you use an orange speed marker and a climb card "one of the orange cards" you do a power dive or power climb. Power dive you go down 2 levels and and power climb you go up 2 climb counters. Hope you like it as I try to keep it simple.

Thomas

[Black Sheep One]

Good ideas and keep them coming. I came up with one using the speed markers. Add 1 more Slow and 1 more Fast marker but put a orange dot on them. When you use them instead of the regular speed markers you are climbing or diving. Orange slow is climbing and an Orange fast is diving. This way you can climb and dive while doing turns and such. If you use an orange speed marker and a climb card "one of the orange cards" you do a power dive or power climb. Power dive you go down 2 levels and and power climb you go up 2 climb counters. Hope you like it as I try to keep it simple.

Thomas

So basically, you are doubling the normal dive / climb rate?

Let's play this house rule next time we play. I'm intrigued.

[johnbiggles]

I figured the whole point of ww2 v ww1 is the manouverability of the fighters, although I think something similar working for wgf as well.
Hmmmm

[Flying Officer Kyte]

I am certainly going to include the bank and climb or dive in my play from now on.
Rob.

[RichJ]

We have been playing with the blue dive/white climb for a while now and it works well. We play that the climb card puts 2 climb counters on meaning the best climbers will probs go up a level (we play with 4 alt levels counting each one as 5000 feet - we do BoB mainly). Dive card works as normal and is normally used to set up an over - dive in our games.

We have also lately been playing with one card planning for average and ace pilots (meaning you pick the card and play it that turn) while rookies/injured pilots have to do the normal core rule planning. The one card planning makes tailing more effective imho as well. All in all our group thinks these changes make it so much more like WWII - or at least as we imagine it was

Rich J

[Lt. S.Kafloc]

Will have to try out all these ideas, they look good. I'm a one for 'if it feels right and looks right, then it is probably right'.

Nice work.

Neil

[Thomatchef]

Good ideas and keep them coming. I came up with one using the speed markers. Add 1 more Slow and 1 more Fast marker but put a orange dot on them. When you use them instead of the regular speed markers you are climbing or diving. Orange slow is climbing and an Orange fast is diving. This way you can climb and dive while doing turns and such. If you use an orange speed marker and a climb card "one of the orange cards" you do a power dive or power climb. Power dive you go down 2 levels and and power climb you go up 2 climb counters. Hope you like it as I try to keep it simple.

Thomas

We are also playing this way and it makes it a more fun game than before! Would defenitley recommend playing like this!

[Kleebatch]

Been experimenting with the modified speed markers for climb/dives after reading about it on this forum, this is what i came up with

White climb marker: act as a slow speed marker, gains you a climb counter, turn the maneuver card it is played on into a steep one (cannot be played on a maneuver card wich is already a steep one)

Blue dive marker: act as a fast speed marker, loose you an altitude level and any climb counters accumulated, turn the maneuver card it is played on into a steep one (cannot be played on a maneuver card wich is already a steep one)

this keep the amount and frequency of climb and dives close to the original system

the climb and dive cards are only used for special maneuvers

one i added that i call power climb wich works as follow:

1st move: fast speed straight with normal fast speed marker
2nd move: climb with neutral marker (gains you a climb counter, turn speed into slow, optional rule: can only shoot at targets at a higher altitude)
3rd move: stall with neutral marker (gains you a second climb counter)

the other is the standard power dive, with the optional rule of being able to shoot only at target at a lower altitude in the shooting phase after the 2nd move

Immelmans and split S are invariated, with the optional rule to not being able to shoot in the shooting phase after the 2nd move.

A side benefict of this is that i can tune climbing / diving performances by removing the climb and/or the dive card (for example i removed the dive card from BoB Spitfires to represent early spits problems with negative Gs in sharp dives)