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mj12games.com/forum → Posts by elsyr
Well, I've sort of got an ace up my sleeve on that. I don't use the altitude counters - I use telescoping flight stands (with 1/300 minis) to indicate altitude.
Doug
You know, the more I think about it, the less onerous keeping track of forward movement across turns seems to me. After all, a player is already counting the forward moves between maneuvers anyway. All that would be required is that the player count them at the end of a move, and plop a die down behind the plane or on the base. No biggee.
This would necessitate changing the forward move requirements for the straight and turn movement orders (straight becomes "at least 1Xturn rating forward required before a turn", and turns becomes "turn before at most 1Xturn rating," instead of 2X), but that's no big deal either.
Doug
Happened across this site today:
http://www.wwiiaircraftperformance.org/
Thought you might find it interesting.
Doug
Since nobody seems to be talking about Spitting Fire, let's try this as a conversation starter:
I still have a problem wrapping my head around the fact that, no matter how you look at it, an Me-410 is more maneuverable in the game than a FW-190. Could it be that, in creating the turn ratings, you did not allow for the effect of wing mounted multiple engines on a plane's moments of inertia? If so, a possible fix would be to add 1 to a plane's calculated turn rating for each aditional engine after the first. This might make the planes (or some of them at least) perform more like the pilots who flew them said they did. It would certainly make 4 engined bombers (which I hope to see in a future supplement 
) the lumbering beasts they ought to be.
Doug
Ok - how about now? :wink:
Doug
Me too. It'd be ok with just a few planes, but a few planes is not the point. :?
Doug
A thought occurred to me today (it happens sometimes, despite the meds :shock: ) about this subject. What if you simply remove the restriction that an aircraft must begin each turn with it's TR in straight ahead movement? If you allow a plane to begin it's movement with an immediate turn, there is more buffer for the die rolls, allowing more chances for a plane with a high TR to successfully complete a maneuver. This could be done in place of, or in conjunction with, using just the one die roll for half loops.
This approach will, it's true, arbitrarily making the planes more maneuverable by allowing them to go directly from one maneuver into another across the turn-turn gap, but so what? The original way is arbitrarily making them LESS maneuverable. The obvious middle road, of course, is to carry over hexes of forward movement from turn to turn. This could be done fairly easily with a D6 on the flight stand, but I'm not sure I want the additional record keeping and/or focal point for disagreements.
What do y'all think?
Doug
Well, the plan is to release a book with some more optional rules and more fighters in the next month or so -- and I think after careful deliberation I'm going to put in some conversion rules. Maybe not the "official" computations (since some of them are a bit intensive), but certainly the point-costing formulae, so that whatever you decide regarding game values will be balanced with the official designs.
Well, that's certainly better than nothing, and it would let people fiddle with things - but as you know, I'd far rather see the whole shebang made available.
From my perspective (as if it were my game), I'd rather do it that way and let people stat up their own planes from their own sources than deal with an endless stream of request for OFFICIAL stats for this or that obscure plane. This is one of the beauties of Starmada - as long as one does the formulae right (and the spreadsheet takes care of that) ANY ship that a player comes up with is, by definition, official. Also, since one of the given design criteria of the game was to NOT base ratings on "this plane is supposed to maneuver better than that plane," I would not want to leave players with no choice but to do just that when rolling their own.
Again, if it were me, I'd want to sell the RULES - the mechanisms of play - not the stats. In order to protect the IP, I'd either take down the free demo or take a good bit out of it so that it was not the complete game mechanics. There's a precedent for this with the demo version of Grand Fleets. It would be more difficult, though, to put up a stripped down Spitting Fire demo that gives a good feel for the game than it was for Grand Fleets. The rules are so slim (relatively speaking) that if you take enough out, there may not be enough left.
Just my own personal druthers.
Doug
Any more thoughts on releasing the plane calculator?
Doug
... what's everybody been up to? Anyone have an AAR to share? Or is everyone busy collecting and painting up 1/300 planes like me?
Doug
It is intentional to make the half-loop more difficult than the tight turn, yes... but I can't say that I went into it saying "Gosh -- the Wurger shouldn't be able to do a half-loop".
There are going to be some planes that just can't half-loop -- and more of them when the bombers show up.
The problem seems to be most prevalent when you have a speed rating that is a multiple of a (high) turn rating. I can certainly see why a B17 should not be able to half loop - at least not easily. Maybe it should have that 1 in 36 chance of success. :-)
Doug
I don't know whether it was intentional or not, but we don't play it that way. We've been playing it wrong (unintentionally), but I like the way we play it better. We roll one die for both tight turns and half loops. I can't think of any reason why you'd make a half loop that much more difficult to perform. Other than a design flaw in the rules. Besides, it already costs 8 MPs when successful.
I'll give that approach a try in my next game. It does seem to me that the 2xturn cost in MP is sufficient to differentiate a half loop from a tight turn - one die might suffice for both. I do like, by the way, that you pretty much have to dive into a tight turn or half loop - makes wonderful aerodynamic sense.
Doug
I had a chance to play a game of SF tonight with my wife. Just to get us familiar with the rules, we kept it simple - 2 P-51s on 2 FW-190s. Needless to say, she sent both of my Wurgers into the ground with nary a scratch on either of her Mustangs. :oops: The only game I can consistently beat her at is LOTR Risk - she has the damndest luck with dice. I really need to take her to Vegas. :wink:
At any rate, I came across something I found odd - it is virtually impossible to half loop a FW-190. Obviously, you have to dive into the maneuver, which makes sense, but even then (unless I'm reading somethng incorrectly) with a dive speed of 18, and a turn rating of 6, you have only a 1 in 36 chance of pulling it off. First you move 6 forward, leaving you 12mp. Then you roll 2d for the half loop. If you roll double 6, you can make the half loop (and your movement is over, as it costs 12 points). With any other result, you're stuck moving forward either the result on one die or the sum of the dice, and either way you cannot half loop, and your maneuver is also over.
Was it intentional to make the half loop so difficult to do, particularly with planes with a turn rating of 6? The P-47 is a little better off, due to it's greater dive speed, but even it only has a 1 in 12 chance of getting it.
Doug
Here's the new version, with pictures and no data. It should not take long for those with the rules to input the plane data into the second tab. One word of caution - if you add planes, it's best to do so by inserting blank rows in the data and picture tabs, editing of the name/sequence formulae on the picture tab in the inserted rows will be required, and it is imperative that the sequence of planes on all tabs be the same.
Have fun!
Doug
That's odd. Can you shoot me an email to make sure the address is right. I'm at elsyr AT comcast DOT net.
Doug
That's odd. Can you shoot me an email to make sure the address is right. I'm at elsyr AT comcast DOT net.
Doug
Dan - did you get the file? Just wanted to check.
Doug
as well as perhaps expand the rules a bit here and there to get a "retro sci-fi" air-combat game out of it.
I'm thinking along the lines of Air Captain or Crimson Skies.
--Tim
Or do WWI. I know MJ12 already has a WWI game, but I like the idea of using the same basic system (perhaps with the scale shifted to accomodate the lower speeds and greater maneuverability) for both.
Doug
elsyr wrote:without having to wait for Dan to get an interest in, for instance, the BV 138 or FW 189 or Lysander or other oddities
You mean like these?
Yup - exactly like those. Thanks!
So this means I can compile a list of all the hundreds of planes I want to see and just post them here, and you'll stat them right up lickety-split? Cool! I'm sure you have nothing better to do with your time. :wink:
By coincidence, I have a model of the BV138 on the way from I-94. Pretty useless, but I just had to tack it in to the order - the Flying Clog is one of my favorites. I'm also fond of the Do-24, the BV-222, and the PBY-5a - I must have a thing for seaplanes. The FW-189 is also pretty useless, but it just looks so cool. Not as cool (or as wierd) as the BV141, but still cool.
Doug
Well ... I'm kind of tempted to leave them the way they are - it's more versatile. :wink: But if RT would be the same point value, that would probably be more accurate. Actually, FR would probably be closest.
Doug
Just curious about the BL/BR arcs for the barbette mounted 13mm MGs on the ME-410. According to my books, these guns could move through an arc of 70 degrees in elevation, each could move up to 40 degrees in azimuth independent of the other, and they could be fired together on a target that was close to directly to the rear. This would seem to make them more like FR weapons, or perhaps RT, than BL/BR. 40 degrees each way is only slightly wider than the 60 degree FR arc. Of course, none of the SF arcs are going to match precisely, but the forward firing capability of BL/BR seems to give them a bit much freedom. Was the main consideration in choosing BL/BR for the two weapons to be independent?
Doug
I'd really like to see the open-source nature of MJ12 games like Starmada continue with Spitting Fire, but I understand the quandary. Maybe part of the problem is with the demo? For Starmada, the demo provides enough to sample the gameplay, but not enough to design ships, which is what everybody wants. Therefore, people can try the game to see if they want to buy it, but really HAVE to buy it to do anything useful with it. For Spitting Fire, on the other hand, if someone has the demo and can create plane stats, they're good to go (without paying for anything). There's not an important piece of rule structure missing from the demo.
That said, I'd rather see supplements for Spitting fire primarily be books with additional RULES (for air-to-ground, jets, bombers and interception, night fighters), than books primarily containing new planes. My preference would be for the rules to be applicable to any plane I've a fancy to create stats for (with the same calculations Dan would use), without having to wait for Dan to get an interest in, for instance, the BV 138 or FW 189 or Lysander or other oddities and publish the "official" plane. I really like the "open source" feel of Starmada, and other MJ12 games ... the game provides the framework in the form of rules, but what specific armies or miniatures or whatnot to use is up to the players. I'd like to see that continue with SF.
Doug
Wilco. I'll send you the file in its entirety in the morning (I forgot I don't have WinZip here at home, and it's half a mb with the pics), and you can clear it down to whatever you think would be good for public consumption.
Doug
mj12games.com/forum → Posts by elsyr
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