Home Forums Air and Sea Air Somewhere Over The Gulf, 1991 Reply To: Somewhere Over The Gulf, 1991

#19887
Avatar photoJust Jack
Participant

“WW1 air ?????”

Why not?

They fly? Check.

They climb/dive? Check.

They turn left/right? Check.

They have differing pilot skills?  Check.

They have differing relative aircraft characteristics?  Check.

They try to shoot each other out of the sky?  Check.

The rules are set up to give a fun, quick game that takes into account all the varying aspects of aerial combat without requiring you to 1) go to flight school to be able to handle the intellectual load, and 2) not have you pre-plot maneuvers or conduct some other time-consuming activation process that slows down and draws out the game.

I’m certainly no aviator, but my (admittedly limited) understanding of the difference between a WWI dogfight, a WWII dogfight, and a Modern(-ish) dogfight is simply speed and distance; there are maneuvers that were come up with in WWI that are still in practice today, and really the only thing a fighter can do now that it couldn’t do then (with respect to maneuvers) is a vertical climb, which is really used only as a tool of disengagement (assuming your plane has the advantage).  But if you focus the rules not on a set time/distance scale, but simply make the time and distances relative to the other aircraft, I think it works.

Or at least that is what GYAPWW1TMDLTGR set out to prove.  I feel these rules are well-placed, that there is a niche for gamers that want to play out dramatic dogfights in a less technical fashion than some other rule-sets out there.  Certainly they won’t be everyone’s cup of tea, as experience has shown there are gamers out there that love nothing more to sit down and spend five hours playing a game that features every single data point humans have on that particular technology/era/aspect.  They want an immersive experience and that type of thing checks all their boxes.

But I happen to know there’s at least one guy out there that wants to play a set of rules like this, so I say again Sir, why not? 😉

V/R,
Jack