Oberst Hajj
06-22-2010, 05:46
In another thread I started discussing and playing around with the idea and layout of a Dawn of War Flight Control Boards. I wanted to start this thread to talk more about it's development and planning of it.
I wanted these Cockpits to include a place for all the official components laid out in a visually pleasing and functional manor. I also wanted to try and cut down on the amount of "play area" that the Cockpits took up on the table. The last requirements I wanted to add were devices to handle house rules such as, Fuel, Ace Skills, and Limited Ammo.
My first prototype looked something like this:
http://www.wingsofwar.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=180&pictureid=4026
That layout looked and worked pretty well for the Bf 109 E-1. For the limited ammo amounts, I took the amount of ammo the real plane carried for each gun type and divided it by 50. This gave a reasonable number of "ammo" for a game and could fit nicely on the Cockpit.
When I started working on a Spitfire Cockpit to further flush out the main design, I noticed that the Mk.IIB had three different damage types and they were mixed over short and long range! This made it impossible to include each type of damage on the Cockpit.
As an alternative, I came up with the idea of making small bullet shaped tokens that could be placed on the Cockpit. These could be color matched to the different damage types (as closely as possible) and then the player could remove a token of the correct color for the gun(s) he just fired.
That produced layouts like these two:
http://www.wingsofwar.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=180&pictureid=4071
The Mk.I had 8 machine guns each holding 300 rounds for a total of 2400, or 48 bullets in game terms. All of the bullet tokens that you would place on the Cockpit would be all the same color (orange for B damage).
http://www.wingsofwar.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=180&pictureid=4072
The Bf 190 E-1 breaks down to 12 MG bullets and 8 canon bullets. The bullets for this one would be 12 yellow and 8 purple.
Coming up with these two layouts, a couple of things came to mind.
First, some of the planes are going to have a lot less ammo, so they are going to have extra room on the Cockpit. Should I keep the core layout the same for each and every Cockpit and just have empty space where needed? On the up side, this would make it easy for a player to switch back and forth between different planes and make the Cockpits easier to use as well as make them all store nicely together. On the down side, we have that "wasted" space and there could be minimal cost savings by making a slightly smaller board.
Second, some of you pointed out that I carried the +1 damage area over from my Wings of War layouts and it is not used in Dawn of War. It was also pointed out that the speed tokens should be moved closer to the maneuver deck. I'm still undecided on this last point.....
I wanted these Cockpits to include a place for all the official components laid out in a visually pleasing and functional manor. I also wanted to try and cut down on the amount of "play area" that the Cockpits took up on the table. The last requirements I wanted to add were devices to handle house rules such as, Fuel, Ace Skills, and Limited Ammo.
My first prototype looked something like this:
http://www.wingsofwar.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=180&pictureid=4026
That layout looked and worked pretty well for the Bf 109 E-1. For the limited ammo amounts, I took the amount of ammo the real plane carried for each gun type and divided it by 50. This gave a reasonable number of "ammo" for a game and could fit nicely on the Cockpit.
When I started working on a Spitfire Cockpit to further flush out the main design, I noticed that the Mk.IIB had three different damage types and they were mixed over short and long range! This made it impossible to include each type of damage on the Cockpit.
As an alternative, I came up with the idea of making small bullet shaped tokens that could be placed on the Cockpit. These could be color matched to the different damage types (as closely as possible) and then the player could remove a token of the correct color for the gun(s) he just fired.
That produced layouts like these two:
http://www.wingsofwar.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=180&pictureid=4071
The Mk.I had 8 machine guns each holding 300 rounds for a total of 2400, or 48 bullets in game terms. All of the bullet tokens that you would place on the Cockpit would be all the same color (orange for B damage).
http://www.wingsofwar.org/forums/picture.php?albumid=180&pictureid=4072
The Bf 190 E-1 breaks down to 12 MG bullets and 8 canon bullets. The bullets for this one would be 12 yellow and 8 purple.
Coming up with these two layouts, a couple of things came to mind.
First, some of the planes are going to have a lot less ammo, so they are going to have extra room on the Cockpit. Should I keep the core layout the same for each and every Cockpit and just have empty space where needed? On the up side, this would make it easy for a player to switch back and forth between different planes and make the Cockpits easier to use as well as make them all store nicely together. On the down side, we have that "wasted" space and there could be minimal cost savings by making a slightly smaller board.
Second, some of you pointed out that I carried the +1 damage area over from my Wings of War layouts and it is not used in Dawn of War. It was also pointed out that the speed tokens should be moved closer to the maneuver deck. I'm still undecided on this last point.....