Version 1.2
Updated Oct 13th, 2009
Each side lines up their bombers as you currently do in RAW.
Now, each round of combat will setup a number of dogfights:
- The number of dogfights will be equal to the number of fighters on the side with the fewest fighters. Example: if the non-phasing side has 3 fighters and the phasing side has 7 fighters, there will be 3 dogfights.
- The phasing side sets up their front fighters for each dogfight. The order in which they are setup will determine the order of the dogfights.
- The non-phasing side then sets up a front fighter for each dogfight.
- The side with the surplus fighters then sets up backup fighters. However, a backup fighter cannot be added to a dogfight if there are still other dogfights with fewer backup fighters.
- Each dogfight calculates their separate air-to-air combat value and fights one round of air-to-air combat with the non-phasing side rolling first. AX, DX, AA, and DA affect either the front opposing fighter in the dogfight or the front bomber from the common bomber line. ACs and DCs affect only the common bomber line.
- After all the dogfights are resolved, both sides have their opportunity to abort the combat. If the combat continues, setup all-new dogfights using the remaining fighters and following the rules above. Note that there may very well be fewer dogfights in subsequent rounds.
If, at the beginning of a round of combat, either side has no fighters then revert to the normal rules for air combat.
Optional (Bounce combat): Every dogfight can result in bounce combats. An opponent's DC can be converted into a bounce combat against any opposing bomber or fighter (but not including fighters in other dogfights). An opponent's AC can be converted into a bounce combat against any opposing fighter (but not including fighters in other dogfights).
Quicker variant
- Instead of players choosing the dogfights, each dogfight matches the strongest available fighter (only air-to-air rating matters; twin-engine and night-fighting capability does not matter) against the strongest available fighter of the opposing side. If there is more than one fighter of equal strength to pick from on either side, the phasing side picks their fighter first and then the non-phasing player picks their fighter.
- The side with surplus fighters adds their extra fighters as backup fighters to each of the dogfights. However, the backup fights must be distributed evenly and also must be distributed in order of strength. The strongest backup fighter must backup the strongest front fighter and so on.
Applying surprise shifts in naval air combat:
At the beginning of each round air combat, the player with surprise chooses 1 dogfight (if playing the quicker variant, the dogfight with the strongest fighters is always chosen). All the surprise shifts are applied to this single dogfight. Note that you are not necessarily required to pick the same dogfight in subsequent combat rounds.
Rationale
WIF air combat has basically remained unchanged since RAW2 when the number of airplanes in the German force-pool was barely in the double-digits. Modern WIF has enormous numbers of planes in every country's forcepool and they have a tendency to be built out in what has come to be known as "The Great Fighter Race". As the air density in the game increases, there is also a corresponding drop in attrition as air battles become larger. The WIF air combat system works well with small battles but starts to run into problems with larger battles. The main reason is that as a battle increases in size, despite the increased number of units in the air, each side can still only lose a single plane and/or pilot every round of combat. Once your side is losing, there is a strong incentive to simply abort all your planes from the combat and avoid further losses. The WIF air combat system also suffers from some scaling issues. Once you have 7-8 more fighters than your opponent, you will chew through them like butter, regardless if it's 8 to 1 or 28 to 21.
The dogfighting rule is an experimental rule that attempts to address both the scaling issue and the intensity issue in one go. There's more rolling, less control over the outcome, and hopefully a lot more dead planes and pilots.
What's new in 1.2:
- Added a clause to handle surprise in naval air combat.
— Pablonius
I'm not entirely sure bounce combat will work like that- especially the part about if there is no fighter left to take a result you apply it to a bomber. I think you might want to consider having the bounce only apply within that dogfight or to a bomber. If you get a bounce it's because the other guy rolled the die and thus there is always something to bounce directly involved. Allowing people to plink at other dogfights yet to be fought IMO will be exploited.
I believe I coined the phrase GFR (Great Fighter Race) on the old Pipex list. While I think your idea here has merit I'd note it puts an even higher premium on the value of your fighters since what used to be backup is now at or very near the front of the battle. Thus the GFR increases. It's worth remembering that the law of the GRF is that players will build all the fighters they think they need at the expense of everything else. So the GRF actually reduces player choices by compelling them to build one specific thing at the expense of everything else.
Lane
I hear you Lane and others have made the same point. I've changed the bounce rule to address your comments.
As for the GFR, I'm not convinced that there's anything you can do to discourage people from building fighters. Air superiority is just too important. But what I think makes the GFR really wonky is the race to advance build the next generation of planes in an effort to get that all-important quality edge. In RAW, the longer you go, attrition actually decreases as a proportion of your on-map units and your production increases. This causes the GFR to actually accelerate! If you increase/scale attrition appropriately, players are forced to choose between recycling planes or shrinking their force pool (instead of steadily building towards UFOs). That's exactly what this rule is designed to do.
Pablo, you should put version number, and update time for your optional rules, so that one knows if the one he sees here is the same as the one he read and decided to try 6 months ago. I noticed that the Dogfight rule was modified, but can't be sure that the version I read initialy (and copied to my hard disk for future reference) is up to date or not..
Patrice
Good point, Patrice. The rule was modified several times during the initial discussion on the list. Since I can't remember the history of it, I'm just going to arbitrarily call this version 1.1 and update it whenever it changes. : )
A DC or AC should allow a bounce combat against any opposing bomber or fighter including fighters in other dogfights. There is no reason to exclude them. I tis still the same global A2A combat.
Heh, well, Lane disagrees with you (see 1st comment). The problem with allowing fighters to bounce other dogfights is that you could end up with awkward situations where a dogfight that is yet to be resolved loses all its planes. Now since the intent is that all dogfights are resolved simultaneously, you have to remember what the a2a ratings were. What happens if a dogfight has nothing left to shoot at (because of bounces and because all the bombers are gone)? It just created lots of unnecessary headaches. And in practice, we found that it didn't really matter. You're mostly interested in bouncing bombers anyway and the "choosier" variant of the dogfighting rules gives you some flexibility in matching up fighters.
Well, what is the problem with "end up with awkward situations where a dogfight that is yet to be resolved loses all its planes". This dogifht no longer exist, and that's all. Why limiting bounces to fighters involved in that dogfight ? The whole a2A combat is a single A2A combat. You allow any dogfight to bounce any bomber, but not any fighter. Not consistent, not logical, and against RAW bounce that any plane can suffer from a bounce. Same headaches. Better stay in the continuity of what exist rather than invent differences that serve no purpose, only making the thing unclear.
The first thing I'd note is that fighter bounce is brand new under the House of Rules and not exactly a 100% official option. To argue it must be played a certain way with this rule is problematic. It can interact with Dogfights in any manner Pablo wants to incorporate into his optional rule. Personally I do think fighter bounce should even be legal with Dogfights. Consider if you have 1 really good FTR. By the Dogfight rule it must be in the first combat. Till it's shot down you can use it to bounce the lowest rated enemy fighters over and over! This is frankly a total abuse of the fighter bounce rule where, like any other bounce, the bouncing fighter must go to the back of the line in normal combat which under the Dogfight rule has zero meaning.
So I entirely disagree with your view Patrice and think it would be extremely bad to play it the way you want and in fact I believe it breaks the Dogfight rule. IMO, either restrict fighter bounce to fighters in that combat, and bombers, or just drop it. Personally, I'm not sold on the fighter bounce in the first place but that is overshadowed by how much I dislike the new back up air to air rule which I know was not properly tested- nor liked by anyone in my area to my knowledge.
Sorry, I'm talking about Bounce, the normal bounce, not the new Fighter Bounce house rule.
Not being able to bounce (normal) any enemy plane breaks the RAW in the first place. The Dogfighting rule have to adapt to that, and have provision to that. If not, it is a bad rule.
Patrice it's his optional rule and he can state how it works. I've got rule set called Simple WiF and I modify all manner of things from FiF and elsewhere to make it work.
If you can put aside your dogmatic approach a moment you might consider how it would actually work. Frankly incorporating the bounce rule as you wish breaks the rule as I explained above. Your insistence on doing it like that when it knowingly breaks the rule could be seen as a backhanded method to kill a rule one might not like.
I'll provide an example where RAW is overruled by optional rules. If you use CoiF then the intrinsic asw in CP's is lost. I don't believe we told the CoiF designers that they had to keep everything in RAW to make the new kit work.