I want a Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2
I want a Royal Aircraft Factory F.E.2
Right now nothing is on Ares's posted schedule as far out as November.
So, this comes from the Big Guy directly:
"We will have to redo, completely or partially
Hurricane, Dewoitine, Stuka, Val,
Curtiss Warhawk, Yak 1, Ki-61, Reggiane 2001
FW 190 D, Spitfire MK.IX, P-51, Ki-84
We of course plan to get these planes back, and in fact we are already re-doing the Hurricane and Stuka, and we will move forward to re-do the other ones as a priority over the development of new models."
Personally, if Rob asked me what to do my advice would be "first crank out another wave or two with the tooling we DO have usable to get cash flows up and pay for the tooling expense."
That's a shame. At this rate I will have all my wgf and wgs shapeways and AIM models finished before we see any new product.
At least it is news. Glad to see something finally being spread. Hope to hear more!
What’s kind of funny is that, within my 25-month-long WGF career, I have yet to enjoy the privilege of a new release.
I laugh in the face of danger - then I hide until it goes away!
Zero and Wildcat survived so they can release the Pacific starter. Andrea’s intention is to make Zero closer to a fragile, light, maneuverable machine this time
They were covered with a paper thin sheet metal, so nowadays they won’t let you touch them in museums so you won’t make dents petting it.
As far as I remember PTO starter should be more around Guadalcanal, but Zeros and Wildcats still fit.
We won't be getting a corrected Spitfire Mk I, either.
Mike
"Flying is learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss" Douglas Adams
"Wings of Glory won't skin your elbows and knees while practicing." OldGuy59
Do we know if there's any proposals for a kickstarter or equivalent crowdfunding?
There are none that I am aware of... Ares is really reluctant to go to Kickstarters for capital because brick-and-mortar game shop owners and the distributors get salty when they think you're trying to "take food out of their mouths with an end run" by doing things D2C.
The trade-off of getting money in advance of production (Kickstarter) or waiting to see if something sells in stores after production (brick and mortar).
Wings of Glory also suffers from niche market issues, and even more niche demand from customers. Disposable income from clients is getting tight, supply chains are tough everywhere, and shipping is getting even more expensive.
Tough for game producers to make any decisions...
Mike
"Flying is learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss" Douglas Adams
"Wings of Glory won't skin your elbows and knees while practicing." OldGuy59
Val, Tony and P-40 all put a cramp on the PTO release, but I see no reason Ares couldn't start up the Starter and Wildcat and Zeke Squadron Packs as an "opening salvo" to get the money faucet turned on.
Well, we played P-40 probably once or twice in last 10 years. Vals are played more often, same for Ki-61. We'll see the reality in few months. Anyway, keeping Mustangs on the shelves is a good news.
We might have more use for P-40s if I can get them to adopt a few "theme" ideas I'm privately doodling out... one is the air campaigns over Northern/Northwesternmost Australia and New Guinea, a second is the Flying Tigers and the third is the 325th FG "Checkertail Clan" in North Africa.
The brand new theatre of war is the last thing WGS needs. Better to continue with Battle of France, North Africa or Easfern front than starting a new one. P-40 can be used at least in two of thread mentined above. That reminds me our last use of P-40 was (probably) in Soviet marking.
Pacific is always in hot demand for the US market; over here almost nobody cares about the Eastern Front or MTO.
The AVG is a famous unit worldwide, and the Checkertails... well, excuse me but that one's kinda personal since I have close ties to one of its postwar successor units. (My grandfather retired out of the 318th FIS, lineage heir to the 318th FS "Green Dragons" of WWII, and one of my college professors was Commanding Officer of the same squadron about 15 years after Grandpa left.)
That's easily understandable. Fortunately, my personal preferences were saturated with Tomáš Vybíral's Spitfire, so not a strong need of anything.
The point was not in ETO, but in "too many starter battlefields".
P-40s were used in the Aleutian Campaign, by both US and RCAF forces. So, technically PTO
You just need Nakajima A6M2-N 'Rufe' planes (Zero floatplanes) to go with.
PS: Hmmm... shouldn't forget the Attack on Dutch Harbor where the Japanese used fighters and torpedo bombers ( Akutan Zero and Nakajima B5N2 "Kate")
Last edited by OldGuy59; 07-04-2022 at 10:44.
Mike
"Flying is learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss" Douglas Adams
"Wings of Glory won't skin your elbows and knees while practicing." OldGuy59
And we really need Rufes for the South Pacific anyway...
Right now, this is NOT an official statement but just an impression I'm getting, it sounds like Ares has decided that "theme releases" of a box-set starter and Squadron Pack boosters treating every theme as a "mini game of its own" while maintaining full cross-line compatibility is their "vision of the future." Me, I'd really like it if they staggered things, have that kind of "theme" then separately but at same time release a traditional "famous aces" set.
Sounds like some of the Strategic War Games theme. A lot of games with similar mechanics and the same base game engine. In their own is a stand alone game. But, you can combine the different sets to get a much bigger game.
Personally, I would be happy with product. I don't care how they release it.
Frankly, I'd really like to see Ares put together Web apps for campaigns on the local, regional, theater and global levels so that as players fight different battles in a campaign the results can be recorded and used to adjust events in a larger "World War" mega-game. Perhaps interfaced with Quartermaster General for resource management... something like how Warlord ties their different games together with interaction mechanics so that your infantry game and your buddy's armor or ship game can have effects on each other.
Hmmm... sort of like the Battlestar Galactica "33" campaign? That could be cool!
PS: Link> Battlestar Galactica – Starship Battles: The “33” Campaign begins!
Mike
"Flying is learning to throw yourself at the ground and miss" Douglas Adams
"Wings of Glory won't skin your elbows and knees while practicing." OldGuy59
The other thing I'm trying to get them to do is make Starter planes the ones with highly specialized, unique decoes that are hard to do with Squadron Pack decals--Galer's "MF-1" Wildcat with its unique red markings at Guadalcanal as seen in Nexus WW2 Series 1, for example--and I'm not sure if they'll embrace it but I'm trying to get them to do carrier planes as coordinated air-wings for one carrier at a time. (Say, for example a Fighting 8 Wildcat, a Dauntless with decals for both Bombing 8 and Scouting 8, and a Torpedo 8 Devastator for Hornet releasing alongside a Zeke, a Kate and a Val for Akagi at Midway. Swap to new decals for Enterprise and Hiryu, again for Yorktown and Kaga, then some land-based air alongside the Soryu airgroup.)
and once again, i know im beating horse minemeat at this point, bbbbuuuuuuuutttttt it sounds like ares would be better off producing maneuver deck only packs because; some money flowing in is better than no money flowing in.
And (at the risk of repeating myself), if they published their decks on a print-on-demand service, they could completely eliminate any inventory costs, stocking and distribution problems, and up-front cash investments. e.g. https://www.drivethrucards.com.
As it is, I've always had an interest in the early "carrier war"...sort of a Pacific BoB...and have long hoped to see that represented in a similar fashion (i.e. 2 Hellcats & 2 Zeros in a Midway starter set). To scratch my itch, I recently bought into the Blood Red Skies version of it and, although it provides all the planes one would want, the system is lacking the simultaneous movement so necessary for the more realistic "feel" of aerial combat. Aaaaand for the same amount of financial outlay, you have to "scrape & paint" everything before you play.
There are many places that do 68x44, which is a mm longer than needed but that's easily solvable just extending the background. My issue is that I've found the original WoG WGF cards scanned, but not the WGS decks, which are the ones I want. So unless someone shares them, which seems unlikely, I'll have to resort to the Deck Aide and the MATES cards if I want to fly a few copies of the same plane.
It might be illegal to print official decks, but at this point I don't really think it would be inmoral.
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