"Perfect Pilots" Topic

Dice are used all the time in gaming to "subvert" the plans/intentions of players, and they don't complain that they've been gyped (well, they can complain, of course: but without any grounds if the rules/risks are known).

You're doing the apples and onions thing: rolling dice for combat effect isn't the same thing as rolling dice to modify your maneuver/movement. I don't mind getting right in someone's dead-six at pointblank range (having gotten lucky or done all the right things to be in such an ideal position), when I roll snake eyes instead of box cars: all kinds of factors can screw up the best of shots. But plugging into the game some randomness about how I fly, that I am informed of after the fact, rather than cognizant of as it occurs, and I am going to be frustrated. The time-motion factor is either the way the game works or you have to leave it out entirely, imho; so either minimal abstraction or random dice work to place the aircraft where it actually is: and the player gets informed, rather than flies the bungled maneuver. In our game the player actually flies the bungle….

Here's an idea that just occurred to me: air combat is essentially missile fire combat: it isn't akin to hand to hand combat at all. A closer ground combat comparison would be two gunmen dodging behind obstacles and maneuvering for position. In wargaming these fights, missile fire combatants on the ground could be abstracted minimally as far as movement for position is concerned: you wouldn't probably want to plug in randomness for not noticing that tree root that could trip you up, or slipping on some cow pie: I mean, you COULD go that far, to "model" the unseen FUBARs of the battlefield, but to what extent would you find it adds to the enjoyment and realism of the game? Frustration would result, most likely: the PCs would be constantly flubbing their intentions to get behind the cover, or race down a hallway to get around the corner, etc. In air combat the analogous aspect to ground movement is the maneuver for position. But I fail to see why we would want or need randomness inserted into the time-motion that subverts a player's natural talent for making the right moves: that just caters to leveling the players so that even the crappy players can "win". So, maybe they should just take up gambling if they enjoy that much randomness.

Hi

G, you are wedded to the idea of pilots sometimes able to pull 5 gs and sometimes not? I am unclear on what sorts of mistakes you are seeing.

Something like, "I am being attacked, I attempt a split S and instead of a 300m split ess, I do 400m radius and fail"(?).

310?

If I am understanding YOUR point, you see a chess game where you want to move a bishop diagonally 4 spaces, but roll a die and only get 3? As a parallel.

Doesn't make any sense in my mind with aircraft.

R

"…rolling dice for combat effect isn't the same thing as rolling dice to modify your maneuver/movement…plugging into the game some randomness about how I fly, that I am informed of after the fact, rather than cognizant of as it occurs, and I am going to be frustrated."

How is a maneuver/movement effect different? Are you told before you declare a shot that you will miss? No --you only learn "after the fact". It's the same thing --yet you complain of movement restrictions while accepting firing ones out-of-hand. I don't understand the distinction.

"In our game the player actually flies the bungle…"

no --the player does exactly as desired: that's not a bungle, that's a mental error which I have agreed/stated should not be imposed upon players. A bungle (as far as this topic goes) is an imperfect execution of an intended physical task/action.

"…why we would want or need randomness inserted into the time-motion that subverts a player's natural talent for making the right moves…"

Because having everything happen the way you imagine/plan it should happen (as it does in chess) is not the only way to represent conflict: an equally valid challenge can be found in dealing with the ___ that happens in the heat of battle.

"…that just caters to leveling the players…"

No: that presents a different sort of game --one in which the perfect plan/idea gets squished between the rock and the hard place of uncertainty and risk. The successful player (not the "crappy" one) in such a contest is the one that recognizes, understands, and manipulates those random factors to the greatest advantage. The fighter pilot who treats a fight like a computer program/chess match is, imo, a dead fighter pilot.

"…the idea of pilots sometimes able to pull 5 gs and sometimes not?"

Yes: they make mistakes, and their performance is not one of machine-like repeatability. To assume otherwise is to assign to pilots some sort of special "never make a mistake" quality --why?

"Doesn't make any sense in my mind with aircraft."

How so? How/why does an aircraft (with a human pilot) behave with chesslike precision…just because it's an aircraft?

Hi

So, you have a driving game where every time you make a turn, you roll to see if you miss and hit the pedestrian?

THAT is what you are suggesting above.

Look, it is a matter of study that shooting a weapon produces a cone of probabilty that is bigger than the target.

To use your rpg, thing, a musket in a game aimed at a target, at 100 yards, has a cone with a 36" radius base, meaning the target standing perfectly still only occupies 35% of the target area. Thus, the shot has a 35% chance of success If…standing still and aimed at.

If the gun isn't actually pointed at the target, the miss is automatic.

Your analogy isn't applied to the shooter, though. In this case, he knows where he is pointing! It doesnt matter if getting to the point, if he walks or crawls. And it doesn't matter if one shooter walks at 4mph, and the next at 3.9mph.

The point of the combat isn't how pretty the maneuvers are. It is simply if he gets pointed at the target.

Similarly, it doesn't matter if one pilot pulls 3 g and another pulls 6, it only matters if he ends up seeing a target in his sights.

If the game is a skirmish game with one player/pilot, the same applies. In combat, pilots NEVER do a formal maneuver. They maneuver or not based on their situational awareness, and may or may not see someone in their sights.

You are overthinking the pilot part.

R

Hi G, in earlier posts you mentioned that you wanted to re-create the mood of uncertainty and suspense that occurs in air combat. In a lot of games the suspense of real combat disapears because the players know a lot more about the situation than the pilots possibly could in the real situation. It is a lot easier for players in a game to estimate ranges and altitudes and to identify opponents than for real pilots. In games, players know both their mission and the "scenario". It might me more fun to discover the scenario as the game progresses. Aircraft types and missions could be "pulled out of a hat" and not revealed to an opponent until he is close enough to make some kind of spotting success roll. The spotting success need not be a yes/no success but could have varrying levels of success: single engine monoplane, single engine bomber, SBD-3 Dauntless. Maybe error could be included somehow? That bogie that you thought was a single seater just opened fire from the observer you didn't notice. History has plenty of examples of fights where nobody figured out exactly what was going on even after the fight was over. The AVG-Flying Tigers claimed victories over zeros when ther were none in Burma. The RAF had pilots claiming victories over HE-113's in the Battle of Britain. Forgive my ramblings if you've already accounted for this.

"…a driving game where every time you make a turn, you roll to see if you miss and hit the pedestrian?

Right --why is that an odd concept? What color is the sky in a world where nothing untoward occurs?

"…it doesn't matter if one pilot pulls 3 g and another pulls 6…"

Do these two actions have the same level of difficulty? Should they have the same chance of success? The specific
numbers can be adjusted, but to say that an easy (or moderately difficult) action can be accomplished with the same ease and surety as the most difficult that can be imagined is ridiculous. It's nonsense…pure and simple nonsense.

"You are overthinking the pilot part."

No. I'm trying to include the (human) pilot part. A game that has the aircraft/pilot perform with perfection is like chess --a fun game, but nothing that can claim to be representative (much less THE default position) of what really happens in aircombat.

Bottom line: we're talking fun games here, not reality. Precise, no-risk movements are one route towards a fun game --but a bit of uncertainty (commonly found in both real life and other games) can also lead to fun.

no --the player does exactly as desired: that's not a bungle, that's a mental error which I have agreed/stated should not be imposed upon players. A bungle (as far as this topic goes) is an imperfect execution of an intended physical task/action.

Players bungle all the time in our game, including yours truly. It isn't that the aircraft does something weird or unexpected: what happens is the player makes a miscalculation of the time-motion situation. Usually these "bungles" are slight, but they happen a lot….

"Players bungle all the time…the player makes a miscalculation…"

Okay, then "bungle" will be the word for a mental mistake --which is, I assume, what is meant by "miscalculation" ?

"…something weird or unexpected…" is not something I'm looking to inject into the game. The goofs/flubbs I'm interested in are just the normal, everyday actions that occur when the execution of an intended task doesn't reach the performance level imagined when the plan was conceived in the player's head.

When I said "bungle" I mean not moving the equipment properly: not turning tight enough is the most common flub: it happens all the time. We have a rule that allows you to turn TOO tight, and open the turn out to line up for the shot: but if you do not turn tight enough you can't "fudge" the turn tighter. This means (as you might expect) that a player ought to always turn as tightly as possible to over-turn, and open out to shoot, thus always assuring a shot. But the way the shooting deflection rules work means that OFTEN the pursuer is trying to get past the deflection line to get the better (lesser deflection or "zero") shot: which means that he is trying to turn widely enough to enter the better deflection zone, and thus can miscalculate and not turn tight enough, and MISS lining up. There is nothing perfect about movement in our game. The player is responsible for steering his movement stand through a simulation of time-motion conditions, and we ALL make mistakes.

Do you inject tree roots, banana peels, sudden gusts of wind, icy streets, drifting shopping carts, loose skateboards, dog doodoo, muscle spasms/cramps, a sudden urge to sneeze, a nail through the foot, broken glass, swarms of bees, spider webs, ad nauseum, into your movement rules for ground combat?

What factors are you imagining that would be GAMEABLE modifications to cause imperfection in movement in air combat? Or are you simply laying imperfection under a single heading with no explanation of what causes the imperfection?

Hi

G..in my example about failing at the turn and hitting the pedestrian….how often does that happen in YOUR world. I live in a 1,000,000 person metro area, and when something like that happens it makes the local news.

i drive every day, I have raced, i drive cross country and I have never made the indicated mistake NOR have i seen it in person.

Pilots don't move with chess like precison, but they don't in our game either! I can SEE, perhaps, if you use hexes and know precisely how many hex facings you get as in Richtoften's war, but that isn't what we are talking about.

I think that you feel something is wrong with airgames, but you cannot seem to explain your feeling to anyone here who PLAYS airwargames…or for that matter has actually flown aircraft.

In our games since about 1975 when we started, we regularly find people moving and not ending up where they wanted..needing no die rolls.

Now, in airforce/dauntless, with shooting in wedges and the like, you might have the point, but, again, you seem to need to rethink what your concerns are and why.

Frankly, in this thread and others, you keep saying "this is a problem" and we keep saying "doesn't happen".

Rocky

"…i drive every day, I have raced, i drive cross country and I have never made the indicated mistake…"

But have you never made a mistake? (…even in one of your lectures to the USAF?) More to the point: do you believe pilots are perfect?

"Pilots don't move with chess like precison, but they don't in our game either! I can SEE, perhaps, if you use hexes and know precisely how many hex facings you get as in Richtoften's war, but that isn't what we are talking about."

Yes, we are -unless YOUR game is commonly available (which, if I understand correctly, it isn't). So: the attributes of YOUR game (as admittedly wonderful as they may be) have, effectively, no value when it comes to a discussion of currently available aircombat games, do they?

The subject is uncertainty(randomization) regarding movement/maneuver in aircombat. I posit that some level (which can, of course, be debated later) of imperfection in the physical execution of a desired action can be a valuable inclusion in a game insofar as it injects a level of the unknown (and the associated fear) that can bring a new/interesting challenge to aircombat games.

Your continued (and, imo, unsupported) contention that pilots don't make physical (NOT mental) mistakes of a degree sufficient to influence the outcome of a game baffles me.

Bottom line: I feel that the inclusion of such uncertainty/imperfection in the physical task-performance of the pilots under a player's command can inject/create a mood/sense of risk/fear that has a place in some (not all) aircombat gaming experiences.

The simple, technical,(boring) movement/positioning of the aircraft is not,imo, the be-all-end-all of the aircombat experience. dry. boring. tedious. dull dull dull…

any game that concentrates on that facet misses, imo, the heart of the thing.

"…you keep saying "this is a problem" and we keep saying "doesn't happen"."

"we" is two…"you" is me…

…to a recovering catholic, such proclamations of "authority" carry little weight…lectures to the USAF notwithstanding: Doug's stick-time carries infinitely more heft…

"Stick time", heh, c. 68 hours: just enough to get my private pilot's licence and scare the hell out of myself almost half a dozen times! Mistakes? Hell yes.

But such is the lot of ALL pilots/humans. Why inject something that is the same for everyone? At most, using the ubiquitous hexboard, I would MAYBE reduce the attack to reflect a somewhat bungled "approach". I wouldn't modify the movement determined by the player, and then try and explain what happened to produce the "mistake". If the mistake can't be functionally, actually produced in the physical playing of the game, then forget it….

"…68 hours…Mistakes? Hell yes."

I can certainly relate to that! ; )

"…using the ubiquitous hexboard…"

ahh, there's the rub. Thanks for sticking with me long enough to put the finger on the problem: with your game it's not necessary (from what I understand of the workings) and with my game -which doesn't use precise hex-movement- it has no great influence. For the rest of the aircombatgaming world (using hexes --WoW uses a pre-plotted system like CE or CY6, so I include it) the practical application of what I'm talking about probably has little chance of a KISS injection into a gaming system.

much ado about nothing --Rocky, you were right, and I apologize for being snarky.

For the time (or times) you shot me down those many years ago in some game I don't remember, however:

Curse you Red Baron!! ; )

BTW: I still think I'm right, of course! ; )

PS- I hereby extend an invitation to any and all to sit behind me in an open-cockpit biplane pusher and get a taste of the sense of fear I'm talking about… ; )

Why a pusher, exactly? ANY open cockpit would thrill me to pieces!

Hi

But I have flight time, but the real issue for me is lecturing pilots entering and debriefing pilots after.

Much more important.

And our rules have been generally available since a 1977 GenCon. It just takes a lot of investment…like most miniatures games to actually play.

As an aside, the game model provided the flight model for the computer modeling for the Star Wars movies. In esence, they programmed the game into the compuerized model movements.

If you had started with "hex games", I wouldn't have quibbled ever.

The short version is that a hex is inadequate for a sim, and you do need a way to sim that, most of the time, the pilot fails to be in the right position. It isn't an issue, though, of the pilot making a bad turn, but misjudging the time/distance part. THAT is the failure that needs to be reflected in a hex based game. It is too easy to get a shot in, for instance, Airforce/dauntless.

or even our own "Mig Killers". In the latter, we reflcted it in the shooting system rather than a "fumble in the maneuvers" part.

R

I am not a pilot and have no interest in becoming one. That said I do have 400 hours in a variety of aircraft to include being the guy in back (GIB)of a F-16 dogfighting. In my opinion you can not realistically simulate aerial combat on a board as it happens too fast. You have greater situational awareness than a pilot could hope for and you have more time to think. Particularly in WW II.
I believe air combat more than land combat is more dependent on the individual than the machine. In my reading most pilots did not score in the USAAC and a relative handful had most of the kills. Yet they all flew the same aircraft. I believe it was agressiveness, situational awareness and luck.
How to model this in a game. Rocky et al want to model this through the player's skill and familiarity with the rules. Gweirda wants to level the playing field and allow for variation. Both sides have said and I agree it depends how you want your GAME to go.
BTW Fighting wings series incorporates mechcanical failures in its games.
Bag The Hun makes the pilots roll for difficult manuvers to see if they pull them off. Realistic, no, but it does allow the game to model different skill/ agressiveness levels of pilots and is great fun
Thanks
Joe

Rapidity of air combat is a problem with any wargame: impossible to recreate, in fact. The slowness of the game is my biggest, unsolvable dissapointment about it.

Doug,

Don't be disapointed. It sounds like you have a fun system that has stood the test of time; something to be proud of!

Joe

"Rapidity of air combat is a problem…"

agreed. This is, in part, why I chose to emphasize/concentrate on the "mood" rather than the technical/mechanical manipulation of the weapon.

"Gweirda wants to level the playing field and allow for variation."

My main goal is to establish/create/communicate a sense of uncertainty/risk/peril and immediacy to the players…

"You're in a tight spot…danger/threat/risk surrounds you…what do you do?"

For me, the answer comes in the form of DO THIS! -with a side measure of HOW HARD? = Quick, odds/risk-based (something most/all gamers are familiar with) and easily resolved.

"How do you do it?" is --while a valid question-- something I feel the trained pilots (the little guys in the models: you know --like the figures on every other miniature wargame tabletop) already know how to do, and they don't need the players to babysit them.

Direction/orders: that's what player's provide (at least in the other genres). It's only in aircombat games that players are forced to mollycoddle/handhold the warriors under their command. Such a thing is not found in any other game, is it?

still ornery as ever! ; )

Ps-- Doug: here's a photo of the type of plane I've got access to right now (I sold my tractor-biplane a few years back…)…

picture

PPS- yes: it's a major-league hoot to fly!

That looks positively, terrifying!

Hi

Just as a note, depending on era, airforce and situation, between 65% and 85% of the kills are scored by 5% of the pilots.

The real issue is, again, time/distance. Pilots who anticpate where people are going to be, get the kills, the ones who just chase about the sky do not.

Unfortunately there is little coorelation between performance in flight schools and aerobatics in peace time and performance in combat.

This factor makes for a bad game/sim. Who wants to play a dogfight game where one or two guys get the kills in a club?

Which repeats my running theme about "what sort of game".

Oh, another factoid, in general pilots who score 1 or 2 or even 5 probably didn't score at all, but guys with 20 or more tend to under claim!

Rocky