Dogfight 3D

“The game” had its genesis back in the early 70s, when a friend showed me the movement stands and fired my imagination with visions of virtual dogfights. I was a fan of the First Air War and had been since boyhood. My favorite board game for years was Milton Bradley’s “Dogfight”; so the name I have given this version of “the game” pays tribute to that memory. I even painted the little airplanes in camouflage and “Flying Circus” reds and yellows. But the 3D aspect was utterly lacking; and I spent countless hours trying to make rules that would fill in that gap. The movement stands fixed that problem. Yet my best friend, Rocky Russo, collaborated with me on “the game” design, and being the physics aficionado, he plugged in as much of the real world physics about flight and the differences in airplanes that a game system could possibly sustain: the result was a great simulation but a clunky game. I have rectified the clunky mechanics somewhat with this permutation of “the game”; but the simulation aspects have had to suffer some loss of detail. This is more of a “beer and pretzels” version (even though I don’t drink beer or eat pretzels): or a “party version”, if you will, intended to play swiftly and easily, and perhaps even be fun for both genders; although being a war game, surely the ratio of male to female active interest will be at least ten to one.
– Dogfight 3D introduction

Designer: Doug Larsen
Publisher: Larsen, Merlin Douglas
Year Published: 2012
Status: In Print
Contents: Available online (Wargame Vault) (200-page PDF) and Amazon (MOBI format)
Scale: Setting up the game requires fully three-dimensional models of the various aircraft. The original game was designed around the use of 1/72nd scale models; but smaller scaled airplanes work fine too.
– Dogfight 3D page 7

In this "beer and pretzels" version, there is no distance scale in time or space. The size of the models more or less determines how the game looks. But I extrapolated the "data" for the aircraft from Rocky's and my game "Triplane". And in that game a turn is c. five seconds. The distance scale is 25mm = 5 meters, or 1:200. Each movement point in that scale is c. 8.9 mph. So, as I cut the amount of movement roughly in half (to eliminate "impulses"), you could say the scale got halved as well, with each turn being well under five seconds, and each movement point being closer to 5 mph. This could, arguably, make the models closer to the scale of the game: if there were a scale. I only provide this background info because you asked. It is not important to the Dogfight 3D game, which takes radically different approaches to making the game play simpler and faster, if also somewhat less "granular" as far as differences in speed changes and aircraft stats are concerned.
– Doug Larsen
Basing: The game requires “Movement Stands”, one for each model/player.
– Dogfight 3D page 7