"Modern Air Gaming - What's The Draw?" Topic

I don't know much about it and wonder what the appeal is to you hardcore types. Are there tactics (I'm sure there are) or is it more of a matter of who launches more missiles the soonest?

Serious interest here and not trying to pick a fight.

When you state "Modern Air Gaming". Do you mean air warfare in the 21st century or post WWII? I would agree with you, if 21st century is your definition. Any BVR combat does not appeal to me at all. I am just painting up some aircraft for Vietnam and I am going to paint some Indo-Pakistan conflict aircraft also. Early missiles were not that accurate and were prone to a lot of problems. Just ask US pilots in Vietnam and why a gun was finally fitted on the F-4 Phantom II.

Mike

Jets in general, although I didn't stop to think it could be sliced into many sub-periods.

I stop about 1973 for my Modern air gaming. I prefer Korea and Vietnam.

My Yahoo 1/600th scale Wargaming Group
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How come? What's the draw? Speed vs clunky missiles?

Epic air duels, great looking aircraft, fast maneuvering, complex tactis, low cost of entry to gaming, especially compared with many periods and the number of troops required for an army.

Did I mention great looking aircraft?

BVR frequently isn't allowed, and I suspect, it may not be as lethal as is claimed, especially with all of the modern warning devices, super maneuverable jets, and chaff, flares, and decoys, assuming your air force/nation has seen fit to purchase and install them for you.

It is surprising how many nations even up through the 1980's didn't provide chaff or flares for their military aircraft.

As mentioned, during Vietnam and the Arab-Israeli Wars, missiles were frequently unreliable, and/or easily fired out of combat parameters, or decoyed away by the sun, clouds, heat from the ground, a truck engine, etc. The infra-red guided Aim-9 Sidewinder had about a 9% success rate in Vietnam, and the radar-guided Sparrow was just as dependable.

If you like fun games, where you don't know if your missiles will work or not, then the early missile age is the place to be. Guns were considerably more dependable, but even they were prone to failure at times, if you pulled heavy G's in your aircraft prior to, or during firing.

Rather like a crap shoot in the air, with your life on the line (at least in miniatures gaming, being shot down is considerably less dangerous). What's not to love about that?.

Sorry. BVR? Big Viscious Rockets?

Beyond Visual Range

Ah, thanks. My ignorance can be colossal sometimes…

You and me both. A 9% success rate with missiles? I'm not sure I'd want to bother with weapons that worked less than ten percent of the time!

To be fair they gave the crews 4 of them, so that's about a 1 in 3 chance that one of them will actually work, and then you've always got your gun, oh, oops….

In all seriousness missile technology was still (literally….) pretty hit and miss up to the early '90s – when you start getting to things like AMRAAM and AIM-9M or particularly AIM-9X, the hit percentages get scary, but before then it's still pretty competitive as it were…. Iran-Iraq in the 1980s was a *very* interesting war from an air gaming point of view, and one that I've played a lot over the years.

Dom.

[Edit] Just had a quick rummage – figures are from the internet, so definitely not to be treated as gospel, but in the '91 Gulf war, 88 Sparrows were launched, with 27% hits, and 97 Sidewinders, for only 13% hits. AMRAAM's credited with a 77% hit rate in its operational use, but that's from a very small sample – only 13 fired in action (mainly over the former Yugoslavia) with 10 hits and 9 kills.

"How come? What's the draw? Speed vs clunky missiles?"

Not liking BVR for me . I tend to like up close and personal :). Robert

My Yahoo 1/600th scale Wargaming Group
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Well, I'd put the cutoff regarding effective missiles in the early '80's as the AIM-9L had a pretty good hit rate in the Falklands. At least according to the few books I've read on war.

Rob

Dom,

Can you offer a link or two to bring me up to speed on the Iran-Iraq air war? Any quick and dirty hex-based rules you like?

The AIM-9L did exceptionally well in the Falklands (90% plus, I think), but probably due to a combination of missile, generally top notch pilots, and (crucially) largely non-maneuvering targets. If it was all down to the missile, the hit rate in the Gulf wouldn't have been 13%….

Dom.

PS – for Iran-Iraq, you'll find no better start than ACIG:
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Also a bit on Iraq vs Kuwait 1990:
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Finally, lists of Iranian and Iraqi air-to-air victories:
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For rules I use Air War C21 – not hex-based, but quick play and seems to get the right results.

Pick up one of Tumbling Dice's "bagged" games, it includes jets and rules. For Flames Above Falklands, you have to add in missile unreliability, speed and maneuvering (you can break up or stall in the rules), plus add that your mission at hand (sinking British ships for the Argies). Very fun gaming!

Not my period at all but out of curiosity, how do games handle unreliability of the missiles? Is it just fire, roll a D10 and on a 10 you hit? Or does the missile stay on the table a while moving and you have several rolls to see if it vectors closer or farther towards the target with the target's actions possibly modifying those rolls?

Depends upon the rules, and how people want to use them.

Many sets have much higher base percentages to hit for their missiles.

Some of us choose to reduce them, for specific scenarios, in order to make the games a little more realistic.

Thanks Dom. This is what I get for being curious. It looks like you just sold me an Air War C21 Iran-Iraq Starter Pack. Just give me a day or two to attempt the pretense of talking myself out of it before I cave as usual. You're still out of flight stands, right?

Daniel

I also like Air War C21 it's a great intro game for Modern air combat. If you keep your air-battles in the 80's and earlier you can still have lots of great tactical battles with great looking aircraft. If you like Iran-Iraq you also might like the 1973 Yom Kippur War, great aircraft like the Mig-21, Mirage III, Mig-17, A-4 Sky hawk, and the F-4 Phantom.

You can use any flight stand for your aircraft; I drill a small hole in the bottom of my aircraft and glue in a small powerful magnet. I have glued magnets onto all my flight stands. They are easier to store that way. I also use my flight stands for my starship gaming.

Modern air gaming is great you only need a handful of aircraft for a fun game. You also don't need a lot of fancy terrain I use an OD army wool blanket or a blue cloth for my games.

Modern games are also great for those "What –If" games like boarder skirmishes with Turkey and Greece, China, and Taiwan, India, Pakistan, and many others like Japan vs. N. Korea.

There are also lots of great color schemes to paint.

Hope you have fun, kick the tires and light the fires.

We just had an Air War C21 game at my local show last weekend. It was set in Nam. The Migs were pretty active that day. A couple of Phantoms got shot down. The game is quite fun.

Thanks,

John

I like Vietnam – it was the ideal combination of gun and missile dogfighting with sides with radically different aircraft and strategies.

Ultra-modern battles theoretically are only boring missile fests – but for the most likely scenarios, rules of engagement and fog-of-war issues could make smaller actions interesting. For larger all-out-war actions, I think you need a set of rules that works at the flight level – and no one has those yet. A derivative of Downtown/Elusive Victory would be great.

Thanks Dom. This is what I get for being curious. It looks like you just sold me an Air War C21 Iran-Iraq Starter Pack. Just give me a day or two to attempt the pretense of talking myself out of it before I cave as usual.

Stalwart fellow…. ;-)

You're still out of flight stands, right?

Yeah, afraid so; I keep meaning to get them in, but finding that big a gap in the cashflow for a fairly minor item just hasn't happened. That said, EM-4's mail order service is excellent, so give them a go….

Dom.

Oh come on, have you never seen Top Gun? ;-0

Joking aside, the appeal is the same as all air wargames. TopGunAce pretty much caught it in his first paragraph. For me it is a combination of the planes and the men.

We usually write the BVR thing into the pre scenario set up. In a recent game four Iranian F-5s were tackling a group of six Iraqi Su-22 strike aircraft and three MiG 23 escorts. The Iraqis were spread out at different heights and low speeds because they had just been on the receiving end of a salvo of BVR missiles from an off board Tomcat. This had also damaged one of the Su 22's and destroyed a fourth MiG 23. Against an intact formation the Iranians would have been in serious trouble, the effect of the BVR attack made the game more even.

Fatman

I get what you are saying. I feel the same way about modern naval combat. Its all done by computer seems like to me.

Actually, no.

It would seem that way, if you believe all of the manufacturers' hype, but missiles have an amazing ability to fail, or to be seduced from actually hitting the target.

It is hard to hit a jet with missiles, when they know they are being targeted, even with multiple missile volleys.

The missile gives you the ability to "reach out an touch someone" occasionally, which can add spice to the games, but frequently, due to high closure speeds, and the need to positively identify the target, combat is still up close and personal, in many cases.

If you read some of the accounts on the two Gulf Wars, you can see how difficult it can be in some cases to get a kill against a maneuvering enemy. Some of the Israeli-Syrian actions also prove that too, due to missile failures, e.g. F-15's vs. Mig-23's.

Close-range I/R missiles are better than radar-guided ones, since they are more maneuverable, and are fire and forget weapons.

Guns are even better.

Hi

recent high hit rates had more to to with the problems with the target than the quality of the system!

F15s have s some silly kill ratio, but, again, it is the target. But then guns miss as well.

Often what happens with missles is that the target is in parameters when you decide to shoot, but not when the missile arrives.

My "choices" for gaming is two fold. In our system we can do it either way: roll against a kill chart based on the real world…or physically fly the missile!

A few years ago playing the Jet version of the Mustangs and Messerschmitts version, a WW mission. My escort was all tied up with 17s and about to lose. I was about 10 miles out, had pulled off the SAM site and was trying to get feet wet when they were yelling. I locked up a 17, launched, and, of course, flying the missile, MISSED. The mig getting the tone had done everything right to defeat my sparrow. But in doing so, had to give up his position and actually give the advantage to the guy he had been dogfightint with.

Beyoned visual range isn't just for Killing, but sometimes a tactical choice for the team.

My attraction, I like being able to fly and fight any plane in history. They are all NEAT. Beautiful in their way. The "game" aspect to me is very secondary.

Rocky

While not a 'light' game by any means, Birds of Prey covers the modern ACM environment superbly, with a top notch aerodynamic model and true 3-D movement. It's built for 2v2 or 4v4 as its optimum case, and once you've learned the mechanics, you have to think like a pilot to succeed.

What is the draw of any war game?

10% effectiveness is lkely to be very ood for any weapons since the invention of gunpowder.

Or are our boys and girlsin the sandbox realy taking at least one enemy combatant out of action for every ten rounds or less expended?

1 enemy out of action for10 rounds expended is a 10% effectiveness rate. If that is being achieved why do they ned to ary more than 20-30 rounds of amuition for the whole campaign? Do the math, US forces are now using 1.8 billion rounds of small-arms ammunition a year. 1,800,000,000 x 10% equals 180,000,000. So at a 10% success rate we should have 180,000,000 Iraqui KIAs per year. Given that the estimaed poulation of Iraq is 31,240,000 they should all be dead several times over by now.
If Doctor Bedlam is right and a weapon system with less than a 10% effecivenes rate is not worth bothering with, let's get rid of the army now. Obviously it isn't worh bothering with.

The point of the above is not to slag the arm, but rather to show that picking arbitry numbers for weapon effeciveness and then using that to determine if they are worth bothering with is falacious reasoning.

Why bother with Napoleonics? Its just two lines of men in silly (drag queen) uniforms shooting muskets at each other al day, to little efect when a batle lasts several days of this slog.

ACW? Same as above with boring uniforms.

WW2? Laughable background. Two madmen squabling over Europe because they didn't lke the outcome of the first one.

WW1? Trench Warfare. Need I say mre?

Modern Naval? One hit, one kill. And modern naval weapons "do not miss" to quote one game designer.

For me modern air has it's apeal in the very high stakes, and very fast speds. You need to decide how to react before theevent you are reacting to has even occured, and if you make a mistake, well humans can't fly so well without their planes. Watch Top Gun. Or Iron Eagle. If it makes you want to game it, you see the appeal, inf not, well somepeople seem to like Napoleonics and WW2…

What's the attraction to Air combat? Have you seen Top Gun, Iron Eagle, or any of a number of anime titles (ranging from pretty realistic flight-sims like Area 88 and Yukikaze to more fantastic stories like Macross)? Have you played the Ace Combat flight sim games?

There's a huge attraction to what most people see as 'knights in the sky'. Once you start going to beyond visual range missile shots, the game gets really boring to me. Keep the action close and there's potentially a lot of drama.

I'll consider playing any air game from WW2 up to about the Falklands, or maybe the RoE-limited missions over Yugoslavia and Iraq. Not having to worry about BVR shots keeps the game interesting to me.

As far as modern naval weapons not missing, that's only true when the target doesn't know it's coming. If the target knows it's coming, then there's a good chance that they will be able to force a miss (or bad hit that doesn't kill them).

Ultra-modern battles theoretically are only boring missile fests – but for the most likely scenarios, rules of engagement and fog-of-war issues could make smaller actions interesting. For larger all-out-war actions, I think you need a set of rules that works at the flight level – and no one has those yet. A derivative of Downtown/Elusive Victory would be great.

i have a feelig that i read that A & A Game Engineering were working on such a project…that would be exciting!