House Rules - Altitude

[Carlos Lopes]

Hello,

Inspired in the work of Andre (Germany Flight Leader) I started to write the Portuguese Group House Rules.

The first house rule is about altitude and the variants of diving. From all I have read until now its possible to have four types of diving: Dive (normal dive, 1 card), Overdive (sequence of 3 cards), Zoom dive (sequence of 4 cards) and Attack dive (sequence of 4 cards)

In this especial sequences of 4 cards I added an extra card to the second manoeuvre.

For play proposal the player have to declare the manoeuvre before start the turn movement.

Pilots! What do you thinks about this options.

Thanks

[usmc1855]

I like the attack dive. I've been reading several accounts of such maneuvers in a few of the pilots autobiographies lately, and and was wandering about how to incorporate such a maneuver into the game.

The way I've been reading the descriptions, I'd almost say that in the attack dive, you can fire after the second card at long or short rang, and the third card at short range (if you have not dropped below the elevation of the target plane), and with the fourth card you gain an elevation counter.
If you dropped below the target with your third card, but have not passed forward for him, then gaining the elevation counter with the fourth might place you in a position to fire up at him, or level off with him and trail him in your next turn.

[SHVAK]

Anything beyond overdive and you are likely ripping the wings off of your bi-plane. Overdives in my games resort to having to draw an A or B damage card (or none, depending on the plane) based on historical tendencies to sustain wing damage at high speed.

I'm experimenting with fractional altitude accounting in my games. No change in climbing procedures except for the SSw D.IV where it can voluntarily climb a half level vice a full one.

In diving however, all planes need not dive a full level, but in doing so must always end up at one of their climb counter levels (ie a plane with a climb rate of 3 can be at X-level, X-level plus one-third, or X-level plus two-thirds.)
In addition, a plane can descend one climb counter level each turn without having to play a dive card. Split-S uses normal procedure.

[krolik]

Anything beyond overdive and you are likely ripping the wings off of your bi-plane. Overdives in my games resort to having to draw an A or B damage card (or none, depending on the plane) based on historical tendencies to sustain wing damage at high speed.

I'm experimenting with fractional altitude accounting in my games. No change in climbing procedures except for the SSw D.IV where it can voluntarily climb a half level vice a full one.

In diving however, all planes need not dive a full level, but in doing so must always end up at one of their climb counter levels (ie a plane with a climb rate of 3 can be at X-level, X-level plus one-third, or X-level plus two-thirds.)
In addition, a plane can descend one climb counter level each turn without having to play a dive card. Split-S uses normal procedure.

I like your ideas, we've talked about the problems with the SSw D.IV & came to the same conclusion.

[Carlos Lopes]

Hello,

I think that this document from "43rd AIAA Aerospace Sciences Meeting and Exhibit", about a study of Performance Analysis and Tactics of Fighter Aircraft from WWI, is very important to understand the performances

Bye

[SHVAK]

Scott Eberhardt's paper is a good summation of things, but really doesn't introduce anything new to what I obtained within my military aerodymanics courses. Those lift and drag charts bring back some bad memories as well. I find some of his conclusions jaded - the Pfalz D.XII could reportedly outdive the Fokker D.VII but I did not see that comparison.

In any event, its still a good read. High lift = high drag is the bottom line.

[Carlos Lopes]

Hello,

We don't have military aerodynamics knowledge but with the information that is available, our combat group think that, in a playable point of view, it is necessary to add some acceleration to the airplanes.

In the last two days, we have discussed a lot about the problem of ripping the wings off and the aerodynamic restrictions of the WWI airplanes in doing "dives".

We get to a agreement. For some airplanes it was impossible, (100% wins off), but in a generic way we are going to do "special dives" with this restrictions:

a) The airplane has to have a Immelmann card movement;
b) It can't have any damage;
c) It must draw a C damage card after complete the maneuver;
d) It must be a airplane designed in 1917 or later.

note: We think that during the war (after 1917 included) the development of the airplanes tend to abandoned maneuverability in favor of velocity and altitude, so the airplanes start to have wings more aerodynamic and structurally stronger for the up and down tactics.

1915-1916 "maneuverability" versus 1917-1918 "climb and velocity"

[SHVAK]

Carlos - In my games, when conducting an overdive (high speed dive), planes are divided into 3 damage categories. History instead of aerodynamics tells us the following, albeit in some cases that the information gathered did not always match.

No damage card drawn:
- Se5, Se5a
- Bristol F2B
- Hanriot HD1
- Sopwith Camel, Snipe
- Spad VII, XIII
- Halberstadt D.II, D.III
- Pfalz D.III, D.XII
- Fokker D.VII
- SSw D.III, D.IV
- All 2-seater aircraft except Roland C.II

1x B-Damage card drawn (use only points/explosion damage):
- Airco DH2
- Sopwith Pup, Triplane
- Albatross D.III, D.Va
- Fokker DR.1
- Roland C.II

1x A-Damage card drawn (use only points/explosion damage):
- Morane-Saulnier Type N
- Nieuport 17, 21, 23
- Fokker A.II, A.III, E.III, E.IV
- SSw D.I
- Albatros D.II, D.V
- Aviatik D.1

Questionable are such planes as the DH2, as it is likely an A-damage plane if thrown into an all WoW plane furball. But during its deployed time period, it could outdive its adversaries and thus has been pardoned to B-damage. The Halberstadt is another.

Perhaps you'll wish to incorporate some of the above into your gaming group's house rules.

[Carlos Lopes]

Hello,

The second house rule is about altitude and the variants of climbing.

There is two types of climbing, "normal" climb and the "45º climb" also called "Vertical Bank".

The vertical bank enable the airplane to climb sequentially two climb counters.

Since the vertical bank is only "power" and not "aerodynamics" the restriction to do this manoeuvre is:

a) The airplane has to have a Immelmann card movement;
b) It can't have any damage.

Note: I also changed the name of Overdive to "Nose Dive" since all the especial dives are Overdives.

My regards

[Cruthers]

My friends felt the altitude rules were overly complex, but I felt they were missing out on an element of the game, so we recently tried this simple implementation that seemed to work okay -

To raise or lower altitude by one peg play one of the red lined cards.

Overlapping planes CAN shoot at one another if at the same altitude (Many of us hated the overlapping can't fire rule).

At short range, one peg difference is allowed to permit firing.

At long range, a two peg difference is allowed to permit firing.

In both cases, if the peg difference is higher, the angle is considered too steep to aim at the target.

The above proved simple to grasp, and made flying a little more tactical when trying to avoid being shot at.