VBAM Games Forums

And the French are waiting in the wings to sell Rafales in place of the MiG-29s...hmm....

Maybe Worlds of MAS should have a contingency for some planes that are purchased to have substandard manufacture/parts?

Tyrel Lohr wrote:Maybe Worlds of MAS should have a contingency for some planes that are purchased to have substandard manufacture/parts?

Yeah, why not! It would be rather irritating to have the "new" Fulcrums constantly down for maintenance.

-Jay

mwaschak wrote:Yeah, why not! It would be rather irritating to have the "new" Fulcrums constantly down for maintenance.

Heh,

Current story aside I got the impression that a lot of third world countries and mercenaries used Soviet gear because it was more reliable than Western equivalent, not less,

(Given the low quality of maintenance likely to be available to a typical third world country or mercenary outfit that is),

Maybe there should be an equivalent for especially high-tech gear?

I don't know that Soviet/Russian equipment is more reliable, but it is simpler and therefore easier to maintain in the absence of a highly-skilled technical workforce. I know a lot of Soviet jets were still analog long after Western designs had gone to fly-by-wire.

Russian style equipment isn't more reliable than Western stuff (their planes tend to have higher accident rates for instance), just cheaper as far as cost goes and simplier to use as Charlie noted. With lower tech base and education level, this is a big factor in third world countries.

Our merc units (MASs) should have good ground crews to keep these new and old birds flying but this is a rules section we discussed in playtesting too........so I'm sure Jay and Charlie will come up with something along these lines if it's playable and adds to game.

MarkG88 wrote:Our merc units (MASs) should have good ground crews to keep these new and old birds flying

Why? These things are expensive (especially for a 'cash-strapped merc outfit'). Employing highly trained technical staff is expensive (especially in a war-zone),

Plus of course a 'cash-strapped merc outfit' is less likely to have the necessary spares to hand to quickly repair aircraft with serious equipment failures (how many spare jet engines do you think they carry around with them - for each model of aircraft they own),

It's hard enough working with basic maintenance cycles, without also having aircraft down for repairs, etc,

(it's not like a MAS can just use another aircraft you have lying around like, say, the USAF would - they are limited by the very few aircraft they have available, and if they're not quickly fixable then I guess they fly short in numbers or lose the contract),

Simpler in this context (less spares, fewer trained technicians) means easier to keep operating,

Gareth_Perkins wrote:

MarkG88 wrote:Our merc units (MASs) should have good ground crews to keep these new and old birds flying

Why? These things are expensive (especially for a 'cash-strapped merc outfit'). Employing highly trained technical staff is expensive (especially in a war-zone),

Plus of course a 'cash-strapped merc outfit' is less likely to have the necessary spares to hand to quickly repair aircraft with serious equipment failures (how many spare jet engines do you think they carry around with them - for each model of aircraft they own),

It's hard enough working with basic maintenance cycles, without also having aircraft down for repairs, etc,

(it's not like a MAS can just use another aircraft you have lying around like, say, the USAF would - they are limited by the very few aircraft they have available, and if they're not quickly fixable then I guess they fly short in numbers or lose the contract),

Simpler in this context (less spares, fewer trained technicians) means easier to keep operating,

Valid points on lack of spare planes etc. The reasoning was to allow MAS to repair damaged planes for "free" if they made a successful repair roll and perhaps modify them to use weapons they weren't originally designed to carry (Russian missiles on American or British jets for example). Just another layer of simulation/detail for players if they wanted it.

I had also proposed a tentative rule to allow your basic jets from the common group to be upgraded with advanced radar, avionics, ECM, chaff and flares. This would require money and skill by the ground crews and you'd end up with a more lethal F-4 or F-5. It would have increased activation cost to fly and perhaps a chance of "breaking down" (requiring damage repair fee or repair skill roll) after each mission flown based on amount of modifications to it (which would have a limit of some type).

This gets a bit hard to manage though (how do you rate F-4 with newer engines was a big "hmmm") so it probably won't go any further than the suggestion stage. But it could be limited to raising Radar and ECM rates (EW little black boxes can and are upgraded constantly as Israel has done this for years with jets they purchase from foreign countries).

The big thing with MAS is, much is abstracted and you can argue that the activation cost for a plane represents paying a ground crew for their time (and overtime) to keep these planes flying since they don't have a national logistics system to rely upon (as well as fuel and cannon ammo of course). Some of the older planes have lower ratings because there were literally thousands of them made so theoretically there are parts out there in the near future to scrounge and also your simpler represents lower amount of ground crew (man hours per plane to activate) and less parts shows up in the older Russian plane activation costs. All this is just my view of what the MAS activation costs represent but I'm a player (and playtester) only as well as fan of the game (currently running Jungle Dancing Campaign with my oldest brother Jack, we're having a good time with game).

This plane modification optional rule of mine was based on research I did while playtesting the game by the way. I found out that the F-4 was given same radar as F-16 in 1980s and there was a proposal to give F-4 newer engines and avionics to extend its life and capabilities (giving it capabilities to match F-15Cs basically). Ditto for the F-111G which would have gotten newer engines but the introduction of F-15E (bomber optimized version of F-15) in late 1980s made that unnecessary as well.

MarkG88 wrote:
I had also proposed a tentative rule to allow your basic jets from the common group to be upgraded with advanced radar, avionics, ECM, chaff and flares. This would require money and skill by the ground crews and you'd end up with a more lethal F-4 or F-5. It would have increased activation cost to fly and perhaps a chance of "breaking down" (requiring damage repair fee or repair skill roll) after each mission flown based on amount of modifications to it (which would have a limit of some type).

This gets a bit hard to manage though (how do you rate F-4 with newer engines was a big "hmmm") so it probably won't go any further than the suggestion stage. But it could be limited to raising Radar and ECM rates (EW little black boxes can and are upgraded constantly as Israel has done this for years with jets they purchase from foreign countries).

I've been playing with some home rules for upgrades as well and I just found them to add too many book keeping to the game. Its also difficult to balance 1 point increase in Radar for an F4 is totally different to an F14. And the game becomes more about building the perfect aircraft than about your pilots flying them.

echoco wrote:I've been playing with some home rules for upgrades as well and I just found them to add too many book keeping to the game. Its also difficult to balance 1 point increase in Radar for an F4 is totally different to an F14. And the game becomes more about building the perfect aircraft than about your pilots flying them.

Are plane upgrades a desirable feature? If we could figure out a way to keep it manageable and relatively balanced, would it be an option you would use?

Its desirable to me and I'm sure to a lot of people as well to be able to customize the aircraft, gives it that little bit more character. Also makes logical sense since it happen in real world, and the way i went about the house rule might not have been the best. You guys probably come up with a better way of doing it though.

What I found (in my house rule at least) was that you either have to make a new aircraft sheet for each variant or have perks/flaws that give stat change but cross referring to them was a pain. Reminds me of the B5 wars Fleet Action where each model of the Hyperion have different SCS and weapon ark.

OK, that's good to know. One thought I'd had was that as long as we kept the upgrades straightforward, say +1 Radar, then we could make some counters to go with the upgrades and you could just place them on the plane sheet.

Of course, I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but I think we can figure something out.