I'd like to see a WoW series with post-WWII aircraft, covering Korea, Vietnam, present day, and hypothetical jets of the future.

Not sure how well that would work with air-to-air missiles; can you imagine having to figure movement for those as well as the acft.?

The simplest method I can think of is add a Missile phaseafter the planes move. Each missile turns at the start of their move and then move towards their target.

Each missile has a maximum turn distance - the three that I can think of that are easy or in game are poor turners can do a 'fire arc' worth of turn max, average a 90 degree turn and super nimble a 180degree turn. Then each missile has a speed which is the number of card lengths they move in each card turn phase and an endurance in full turns - each turn end you drop a marker down on the missile card. If it overlaps the target card it goes off for B damage, if it overlaps the picture it does A damage (or similar).

Three 'basic missile profiles' to try

IR dogfight missile - Super nimble turner , speed 3, endurance 2

Radar guided mid range missile - Average turner, speed 2, endurance 4

Long range terminal guidance missile - Poor turner, speed 2, endurance 10

It'll get busy and Im not sure how well WoW would work in the missile era but the above is a useable quick option.

myrm said:

It's a nice idea, but it doesn't change the fact that each missile fired adds directly to the amount of time needed to complete a movement phase. Depending on how many missiles a plane can have airborne at a time (esp. with modern "fire-and-forget" systems), the weight of figuring out movements multiplies spectacularly.

I used to play GDW's _Air Superiority_ -- I have seen how bad MIssile Combat can get. it makes the Combat Algebra sequences from David Weber's novels look like a pie fight....

csadn said:

Hence my ending statement of it would get busy and Im not sure how well it would work - my start point in modern aircraft tactical battles was AH's Flight Leader. Having played SFB with Kzinti vs Klingon fleet battles I've seen how missiles can REALLY bog an impulse based game down. Heck, even Car Wars got slowed with a only few guided missiles on the board as extras.

Another failure of the above system I gave, which is more significant in gameplay terms, is that it takes no account of either countermeasures or missile engagement aspect capabilities. If you play early enough eras you could probably get away with limiting each plane to one missile in the air at once but still it was above all supposed to be a basic missile game.

The other option is to extend the notional scale so that missiles become direct fire weapons to all intents and purposes. However if you do that you simply have to include certain details of altitude and aspect/arc of fire to allow this to work. Its probably the easier option though. Then each aircraft has a dogfight rating and if the cards overlap they furball that turn, cannot fire and draw the oppo's dogfight rating as cards of damage (be it 1xB or 2xA). While I think that is more likely to be a successful route to go, that becomes a little more involved however - most particularly in how much the manoeuvre decks would end up varying with the extended range scale.

myrm said:

An option which suggests itself here: Give a particular missile a numeric value, equal to the number of damage chits it draws; for each full range increment the missile has to "travel" to reach the target, it loses one chit draw.

Ex.: A missile which has value 6 draws 6 chits (of whatever type) at range 1, 5 at range 2, etc. The greater the range, the less likely the missile is to accomplish anything.

Not sure how best to simulate chaff, flares, and such....

Interesting that no one has discussed the fundamental problem with post-War aircraft. They faster the aircraft move, the farther the distance they travel. The WW I aircraft are 1:144 scale (I've been told, which is half 1:72). The movement cards are perfect for these slow aircraft. I happened to catch "The Blue Max" on American Movie Channel last night, and the aerial scenes are just brilliant -- even though they were filmed (not faked) around 1965. These planes really are kites, and the side-slip and slew through the skies more than just go straight and turn. The Fokker Dr.1 triplane was not fast with all that wing area and wires to push through the air, but it could turn almost in its own length, according to some British fliers.

Now, all of that works with the line-lengths available on the cards in the game -- with different lengths and tighter turns depending on the aircraft type. But I haven't tried the early WW II game yet because I don't think those line lengths work with 300mph aircraft, and they certainly wouldn't work for 500mph propeller-powered aircraft and +600mph jets.

I think it would take an entirely different playing system to simulate any aircraft faster than about 150mph. As for air-to-air missiles, remember that makers were still building aircraft with machine-guns and cannon well into the mid-1950s and missles were in their infancy during Korea. I think you could possibly work firing missiles into the firing sequence of gameplay, but the huge distances and turning radii of aircraft much faster than those in WW I makes for an entirely difference game.

I think the Korean War might work in this game, though the minis (if any) would have to be even smaller than 1/200. Still, not a bad thing. We get some jets, and the rules stay the same (pre missiles).