I know there has been a lot of work done on this before, but I wanted to see if I could get the ball rolling on a game that uses some of the rules and templates for X-Wing and adapts them to World War II aircraft.

So for my idea of the game, this is what I'd want as specific rules changes from X-Wing:

The bases are all the same for all ships (no rooting through a box of cardboard bases to find the right one) and they all have 12 arcs printed on them in a circle (a few more than in . In the game, all weapons are designed with reference to these 12 arcs. 12 is directly in front, 6 is directly behind, and they go clockwise. So an arc that is described as "[11-1]" uses arcs 11, 12, and 1 and is roughly the 80-degree arc in this game.

The actions aren't on the card for simplicity. All ships have target lock, focus. Ships with agility of 2 or higher have barrel roll. All other actions are on upgrades.

Squadbuilding: 200 points for granularity.

In the combat phase, you may attack with each weapon once.

To attack, there are two sets of rolls. First, the defender rolls hit dice equal to their attack value and the defender rolls evade dice equal to their agility value. Set all critical hits that make it through aside, and then cancel all dice results. If the attack hits, then the attacker rolls again, this time for damage, and add all critical hits saved from last step. Cancel hits equal to the defender’s strength value, then deal damage.

So here's an example ship:

It would have target lock and focus. It rolls one agility dice, but tanks 2 damage per hit. It also has 24 hit points (hull, as there's no shields in WWII).

It has no system slots, two missile slots, 3 bomb slots, 2 crew slots, 3 modification slots, and costs 59 points (which is, for reference to designing other ships, 0.0002 times what it cost in the real world in USD). It has three weapon slots, A, B, and C. Weapon A attacks out of a large, roughly 140-degree arc. Weapon B attacks out of all except the front arc. Weapon C attacks anywhere. Note that missiles, by default, only attack out of arc 12. So this is definitely a "fat turret" ship. Also, I forgot, but the Large keyword should be right next to the USA logo there to indicate that this goes on a large base.

This is a total rough draft, but I thought it was a fun concept and I'd love to see if we could get the ball rolling on something like this! Does anyone have thoughts for other ships? Also, this card was just created using Microsoft Publisher, so if anyone wants, I can share the file for that here.

Interesting concept (shame on you for using the post-War US insignia!) However I'd throw in some mechanic to handle energy, considering the importance of airspeed and altitude to air combat, and make more use of specific maneuvers. Then you could work in more quirks of actual aircraft. For example:

The A6M Zero is slow, but highly maneuverable and has high acceleration, and is capable of making very tight flat turns. The F4U, while faster, doesn't turn as well (horizontally) and is slower to accelerate (she's a big and heavy aircraft). But it DOES hold energy better and it maneuvers better in the vertical.

So let's say a Corsair is pursuing a Zero. The Zero makes a hard break turn (say, equivalent to a 1-Turn) to the left because the Corsair can't follow. The Corsair instead elects to execute a High Yo (basically, a turn that incorporates a high vertical component. This could be a replacement for, say, the T-Roll). This is an energy burning maneuver that would allow the Corsair to follow the Zero at the expense of X points of Energy. The Corsair pilot must then balance energy burning and energy saving maneuvers, and keep a careful eye on how much E he has remaining. If he runs out of E his maneuvering abilities become limited (let's say to a 1 bank or 1 straight until he's able to regain E). Each craft would have its own modifier for how quickly it burns or builds E, and each maneuver would have a particular E cost (so, if an aircraft with a burn modifier of 2 performs a maneuver with a cost of 3E, he uses a total of 6E to execute that maneuver).

Basically instead of Jousters and Arc Dodgers, you'd have E fighters and Turn fighters

Thanks! Cool idea! I think stress was originally a way that FFG tried to handle that kind of thing, but I like the added complexity and realism!

And yeah, like I said, total rough draft. Wrong insignia, simple graphics, and the picture isn't from the right squadron. Just something I threw together to try to demonstrate the concept idea.

Uh ... Wings of Glory?

2 minutes ago, Hawkstrike said:

Uh ... Wings of Glory?

That game is fun, but it's definitely simpler and not very similar to X-Wing. The idea here is to create a more complicated game that feels like X-Wing, but airplanes. Not completely married to the specific physics of the game I have in the original post, just an idea. I'm also good if the game is really just X-Wing rules but in WWII. But I don't really feel like buying Wings of Glory - it never caught on in my FLGS.

The question would be how to account for factors such as altitude (VITALLY important in air combat) and airspeed (unlike a space fighter, a WWII aircraft can't just go faster or slower on a whim). You're also much more subject to airframe limitations (IE, Zeros would shed parts in high-speed dives, but the F4F could fall out of the sky like a brick and remain perfectly flyable). I suppose the X-Wing rules for asteroids could easily be used for clouds (just without the roll for damage). But terrestrial obstacles like mountains become a significant factor and hazard. What about ballistics? The M2 Browning was significantly more accurate than the heavy cannon favored by the Germans.

There's a LOT of things to consider how to implement, or whether you even want to.

Yep, that's why I thought it might be cool to have two different attack values - one for hitting, and one for dealing damage.

As for the altitude thing... maybe adding and removing pegs? Gets unnecessarily complicated real fast though.

I dunno. It doesn't need to be super accurate. For accurate Star Wars dogfighting, I wouldn't pick X-Wing either, I'd pick the old PC games. I just thought that the way the X-Wing game plays is fun and it would be cool to have a game like it set in the real world, where there's significantly more lore to draw from. This is definitely a WIP. I might work some more this weekend on making complete rules and better-looking cards and then let people judge.

If you need inspiration for a World War II Wehrmacht Officer Core, here is what the patriots of the Imperial High Command sounds like in German, I love how General Tagge says ‘Kaiser’ for The Emperor.