Keeping it interesting while flying solo

[dmolinal]

I hope you are all well. At the time of the writing of this post, we have been already nine months under curfew (and not because of German Zeppelins bombing at night). Therefore, playing with others is out of the question. Thus, I came up with an Excel programed spreadsheet to plan, randomize and select many aspects of a solo game.
This screen is the general scenario generator. It will select for you your side, and how many planes will be flaying with you, if any, then it will assign a mission, and a target, then it will determine if there are ground forces that will oppose your mission. Then it provides the number of planes you will encounter, where do these airplanes appear, whether they are flown by Aces, and which Aces. If an Ace does not have a WOG ace card with abilities, random abilities will be selected. Keep reading to see how.




Once the general mission is created, then the planes are selected in accordance with the mission. In the case above, since it’s a recon mission, one of the observer plane will have to be selected from the next table which is also randomly generated from those airplanes suitable for each type of mission.



If the pilots are aces with an official WOG card, their abilities appear here, otherwise, the abilities are randomly generated on account of the real number of victories known.


If the mission is a bombing mission, after having selected the type of bomber that you will pilot, you will need to select the type of ordinance that you will carry in accordance with the bomb load that the airplane can hold and the type of target to be bombed. The damage required is also randomly selected within certain parameters to reflect different construction types. Instead of the point value, you can select the damage value stated in the red square, where damage is assigned by the value of the damage cards instead.



If your mission is German and bombing, you may select to fly a Zeppelin dirigible. I have printed in “mouse mats” those available in the files section. I have included here some of the rules for the game Zeppelin Raider as the official WOG have no detail on how to fly these. Thus you can see from the table below that the program will select the conditions, target and amount of opposing planes. If the bombing target is inland from the German perspective (places like Liverpool or Manchester) airplanes will also appear in the rear as they are “dispatched” from bases already alerted to your presence.



This is the table that selects the target, and then the particular places to target.


If I want to fly an even game (which I normally do not, as in real life you cannot guaranty fairness and rather are left to chance), I have included a quick way to determine the amount of points for each plane, also using one of the points assignment suggestions from this site.


Finally, a couple of pictures from a bombing mission generated randomly with this "program"

[Stumptonian]

This looks really interesting, Daniel


Any chance of you loading to the files section?

[dmolinal]

@ Stumptonian, I tried to post it in the files section but was unable to do so, the file was never appended to the text I wrote, and the page kept indicating "the following error has occurred" but no error was stated. Can you help me do the upload? Furthermore, I would certainly appreciate your comments on how it woks for you.

[Stumptonian]

I haven't loaded anything to the files section myself.
I know that all uploads have to pass a moderation before being accepted.
That can take several days lately.

I will respond to your PM with my email address so you can send a copy for me to review,