Mission De Bombardment

I have ordered the newish collection of WW1 French planes from Tumbling Dice, along with more bases to put them on, so sometime in the next ten years I will have a substantial French force to go with my British and German planes. It will also give the bases on which to mount my new Farman Shorthorns.

However I do have a few French planes, so whilst I was in the mood I gave them an outing yesterday. I ran a bombing mission set around September 1915. The French had two Farman F20s and providing cover for them was a Morane L fitted with a machine-gun and some Garros wedges. The Farmans had bombs and a front-mounted machine-gun. Each had one load of bombs. There were two targets and they could hit either of both of them. 

Originally I was going to have teh Germans appear randomly according to teh threat generation system I've used elsewhere, but in the end I simply randomly placed them so that they came on in the centre of the three edges that weren't the French baseline. The Germans had one Fokker monoplane, and an Albatros C with a rear machine-gun. 

The bombers failed to spot any Germans for a good while, but the Morane and Fokker saw each other and angled in on each other. 

The Fokker got the jump on the Morane and scored some damage. 

The Morane actually maneuvers OK, but is slow. Whilst it turned around - slowly - the Fokker got in on the tail of the Farmans. They had actually spotted the Germans by now, but were doggedly aiming for the target. The rear bomber took some hits, and its pilot was wounded. 

As the first bomber lined up on the target the Albatros entered the fight, ranging up alongside a Farman and firing an ineffective burst from its gun. 

The Fokker suffered a gun jam!

The observer of teh lead Farman had time for one burst before having to line up his bomb run. It was a good one. The Albatros's engine started spouting thick black smoke, and down it went. 

The first Farman got its bombs on target. The second Farman was now in trouble again, as teh Fokker cleared its gun jam and came in for the kill. Trying to bomb the target would be fatal at this stage, so the Farman started to turn hoping that the Morane would come up in support. There was always the other target, after all. 

The Morane finally came back into the fight as the damaged Farman had to turn away from the second target, unable to approach it due to the Fokker's unwelcome attentions. The other Farman was doing a wide turn beyond the targets and trying to bring its gun to bear on the Fokker.

Once again the Fokker dodged the Morane. The damaged Farman started for home.

The Fokker sped off in pursuit. It's faster than the Morane and a lot faster than the Farmans. 

The Farman dodged as best it could. And, in doing so, it forced the Fokker to slow, giving the other French planes a chance to catch up. At least the other Farman. Once again the Morane was making a meal of the simple process of turning around. 

However it couldn't dodge forever.

It fell apart in the air.

But the Fokker's victory was short-lived. The second Farman was in range, and a quick burst from its gun destroyed the German monoplane. 

So it was a bloody fight, with three out of five planes destroyed. The crew of the surviving Farman had two kills to their credit, including an Eindecker, whilst the pilot of the Morane had contributed little to the action. The French had got one load of bombs on target as well, so on the whole could claim a win here. 

I tried out a few rules changes, which I will do some more with going forward.

The first is a mechanism change. I'm still not sure criticals come up enough (deadly though they generally are). So instead of just rolls of 6 counting towards the critical number, any hit on the red dice will count when testing for criticals. Only rolls of 6 will count on the white dice.

The second change was to try and represent the limitations of the Garros wedges. Not in terms of teh propensity for shooting off your propellor; that would just be an extra test I didn't want to deal with. But it wasn't as efficient in terms of gunnery as synchronisation or interrupter gear. Whilst there's not a lot of granularity in my firing mechanism, I thought something might be possible. So whilst it still counts as a fixed gun for firing, it can only count one roll of 5 as a it. Other dice must hit on a 6. This makes it slightly better than a pivot fun, but not as effective as proper fixed guns. This system could be applied to early improvised gun mounts and also to planes with a top-win Lewis as their main weapon, such as teh Nieuport 11. 

The third change was to bombing, which I wanted to make more random. When a plane is over the target it can declare that it is dropping bombs. If you have a dedicated observer doing this and they are doing nothing else then you get 1 dice. If you have an observer and they are busy then no bombing run can be made. You get one additional dice for each of being at speed 3 or less and flying in a straight line (no turns or sideslips). Roll the dice and take the highest score. If it's a 5 then the bombs score a partial hit. If the highest roll is a 6 then it's a direct hit. Direct hits score more points if you're counting such things. Note that a plane bombing without an observer, such as a Camel with bombs, gets the one or two dice for speed and being straight and level. 

And finally, I need to look at planes, such as the Farman F20, that have a top-speed of 3. There is a maneuver modifier of -1 if a plane chooses a speed of 3 or less. Since these aircraft already have a low maneuver value, it seems odd to give them and additional penalty as well. So my thought is that they only get the -1 modifier if they move less than 3. Other planes, with a speed of 4 or more, are still penalised for going at 3 or less. I just need to work out some clear wording for it. 

I tried this scenario again later in the day, but didn't take any pictures. This time the French failed to get any bombs on target, but the Morane did better, shooting down the Albatros, whilst the Fokker fell to a Farman again. The French had planes damaged, but all got home.