Blue max competition

This is a turned based strategical game. It takes place 1917 during the great war and each player will be a pilot, either for the central powers or the allies.
Nations you can play are Germany, Austria-Hungary and Turkey from the central powers and Great Britain, France, Italy and the United states from the allies. Most nations will have their own planes.

Here is how things work: The planes will move on a hexagonal grid. Each player will report a code for their movement like "8L1" to me in a message, it is secret and can not be shared with allies or enemies unless you are tailing someone or fly in formation with allies. If you are tailing another plane (basically seeing their tail fin) they will have to report their move first to me, you will then be able to know if they are turning in either direction or flying straight. There are also a few special maneuvers that require you to first have flown a straight maneuver (and only 2S1, 3S2, 4S3 or 5S4) to make. Since we wont run altitude rules you can increase or decrease speed by 1 or keep it the same (the speed is the last number of the movement code so said 8L1 have speed of 1 and can be followed by speed 1, speed 2 or a stall (you can only stall once in a row).

There is a stat of each plane that also affect movement: Stability. Certain planes were on purpose built unstable which is both an advantage and a disadvantage. The advantage is that if your plane have stability "C" you can directly turn from right to left but since the plane is unstable it is a poor platform for your machineguns which means your chances of actually taking down an opponent is less. Planes with stability "A" and "B" can not go from a right to a left turn directly but they do more damage.

Once everyone have made their move I will Change their position on the map and we will move to phase 2: Combat.

Planes with only a pilot will fire straight up to 3 spaces from them. Planes with an observer can also fire behind them and to the sides but not on the square right behind them since their tail thin is in the way. I will tell who can fire on who when I post the updated battlemap.

The closer an enemy is to you, the more damage you will make. If you are shooting along the body of a plane (straight in front of or straight behind) you will also do more damage since the bullets will travel through the length of the plane. This will be solved by a table and I will roll dice to determine how much damage anyone makes.

Most planes will carry 2 Spandau or Vickers machine guns, some will only carry 1, some will have a Lewis gun with a drum magazine and some will have a parabellum observer gun. The only one to keep track of here is the Lewis gun who has a drum magazine that requires reloading. It has 5 ammo, a short burst cost 1, a medium 2 and a long burst 3 ammo. If you are flying a Nieuport 17 who has both a Vickers and a Lewis you can fire a short burst with the lewis and a long with the vickers to be counted as a medium 2 gun burst.

The long burst makes a lot of damage but when you fire it chances are that your guns could jam. You have a small hammer to smack on the guns until they work again but you need to fly in a straight line to do that (2S1, 3S2, 4S3 or 5S4).

Damage: You plane will have a few different hit locations: Wings, fuselage, tail and engine. If your engines loose all hitpoints you will glide (2S1, 8L1 and 8R1 only). If anything else goes you will crash. Your pilot and observer can also be hit. If the pilot dies you will crash. If the observer does he can't shoot.

So phase 1, send the code of your movement to me (in the chart you are on the square with an arrow so a 2S1 will move you a single step forward still facing forward).
In phase 2 we will see who can fire on who and you will report if you want to fire and in that case, if you want to fire and what type of burst you want to fire (short, medium or long).
I will keep track on everyone's damage but you can also keep track yourself.

This might sound complicated but it really isn't. The main thing each player need to keep track on is their own movement and to guess where the enemy will move so you can shoot them down.
There are rules for altitude but we wont use them and there are rules to keep track on ammunition but we will only bother to use that for Lewis guns which only have a 50 round magazine. Your plane might also start to smoke or catch fire but we will worry about that when it happens (fire bad, beer good).

Central powers

The Allies

Things will play out on a simple hexagon map (this is not the full map, just parts of it to show of the principle).

I might also add some 3D photos of the current situation using models and 3D terrain but that will be saved for interesting situations since only using that looks a bit confusing because it is hard to see the big picture that way

The first mission will be a simple dogfight in which both sides run into eachother. It will last 20 turns and you need to either still be flying or have left the map on your side of the frontline to survive. Each turn will net your pilot 1 XP, each plane you shot down is worth 50 XP but that might be shared if the plane go down when several planes shoot at it. The pilot firing the killing shot will be awarded a victory (unless he dies that turn, then anyone else firing at it will get the victory point even if he or she doesn't do any damage at all).

If you guys like it, I have more advanced missions including bombing runs, strafing, photograph missions and more. Any surviving pilots gain abilities while if you loose your pilot you will get a 20 minuter who lacks the ability to tail and do advanced maneuvers until they get up to 50 XP or gain their first aerial victory. But that is if we think it is worth playing more later.

This is an experiment, but it is also a competition.

Participants:
Freed bavaria
Main: Germany, secondary choice: UK. Plane: Fokker DrI for Germany and Sopwith Camel for the UK