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RichardPF
11-04-2013, 22:53
... All-in-all, I guess around 20 or so turns...

OK so here's where I was going with this.

Just as a back of the envelope calculation it seems to me like the average ship movement, between the length of the arrow on the movement card and the ship base, is about 5 inches.

As the ship scale is 1:1000, that means 5000 actual inches or about 417 feet.
If the speed of the ship is, say, 6 knots that translates to about 36,450 feet per hour.

At this rate, the 417 feet would be covered in about 41 seconds.
Multiplying this by 20 turns is a bit under 15 minutes of actual engagement time (13 min 40 sec actually).

The question is, did the 20 turn game seem to represent an engagement of about 13 - 15 minutes?

7eat51
11-04-2013, 23:22
OK so here's where I was going with this.

Just as a back of the envelope calculation it seems to me like the average ship movement, between the length of the arrow on the movement card and the ship base, is about 5 inches.

As the ship scale is 1:1000, that means 5000 actual inches or about 417 feet.
If the speed of the ship is, say, 6 knots that translates to about 36,450 feet per hour.

At this rate, the 417 feet would be covered in about 41 seconds.
Multiplying this by 20 turns is a bit under 15 minutes of actual engagement time (13 min 40 sec actually).

The question is, did the 20 turn game seem to represent an engagement of about 13 - 15 minutes?

I never thought of this. I think it is quite possible. One hard part in answering is considering the range of fire scale, to what degree scale is representative or abstract in a given game, similarly for the difference in movement between full sails and backing sails. Given the game at Rock-Con, if everything was assumed to be close-up, that the distance between ships were in scale to the ships, and that the firing was all done at extremely short range, I would say 13-15 minutes could be accurate.

Regardless, at both cons, I am sure the engagements seemed much longer to the French.

RichardPF
11-04-2013, 23:47
I never thought of this. I think it is quite possible. One hard part in answering is considering the range of fire scale, to what degree scale is representative or abstract in a given game, similarly for the difference in movement between full sails and backing sails. Given the game at Rock-Con, if everything was assumed to be close-up, that the distance between ships were in scale to the ships, and that the firing was all done at extremely short range, I would say 13-15 minutes could be accurate.

Regardless, at both cons, I am sure the engagements seemed much longer to the French.

I was guessing that these might be about the game real time numbers and that it would seem reasonably accurate time for a close in engagement.

Once we establish that the battle or full sails speed is about X knots and that the distance traveled by the miniature is Y and the scale of the pieces is Z, the engagement time just calculates itself.
If someone were to use instead of 6 knots, say, 7 knots or 5 knots as the speed of travel of a ship of that kind under those conditions the answer does not change all that much and the speed would not likely be much beyond that envelope.

It would seem to me that the Time, Speed, and Distance traveled for the ships does work out quite realistically.
Bravo Ares!

David Manley
11-05-2013, 00:49
This is not exactly on the topic of collision example #2, but I was wondering if those who have run demo games have kept track or have an estimate of how many turns the games are lasting?

Our last game (4 ships) lasted 2 hours and we played 16 turns.

David Manley
11-05-2013, 01:02
I was guessing that these might be about the game real time numbers and that it would seem reasonably accurate time for a close in engagement.

Once we establish that the battle or full sails speed is about X knots and that the distance traveled by the miniature is Y and the scale of the pieces is Z, the engagement time just calculates itself.
If someone were to use instead of 6 knots, say, 7 knots or 5 knots as the speed of travel of a ship of that kind under those conditions the answer does not change all that much and the speed would not likely be much beyond that envelope.

It would seem to me that the Time, Speed, and Distance traveled for the ships does work out quite realistically.
Bravo Ares!

Don't work on the model scale, work on the weapon range. If you assume model scale = ground scale you'll need to increase the length of the ruler to about 6 feet. I did some calcs to see what a reasonable turn length was in terms of time and, depending on what assumptions you make about gunnery ranges in the game I worked out with a time scale of 3-6 minutes, which would make your 16-20 turn game something in the order of 48-120 minutes, which feels about right. And this time aspect is one of the reasons I don't use the 2 card movement system but just stick with a single card play (something I'm liking more and more with WGF, btw).

BUT

Its a game. Like WGF and WGS it is not a simulation

Don't over analyse it.

That is the way to madness

7eat51
11-05-2013, 05:45
And this time aspect is one of the reasons I don't use the 2 card movement system but just stick with a single card play (something I'm liking more and more with WGF, btw).

Interesting. I will ask those at the cons which way they enjoyed more, one card or two. This is encouraging as far as not feeling the need to play two cards if the audience would enjoy one-card play more.

With WGF, what has been the practical effect of playing one card? I imagine it feels more responsive and probably results in faster play.

I am growing to appreciate these Ares games more and more. I see so much room in them to customize the game as desired. In the past two weeks, my understanding of altitude and tactics has increased, that has me desiring to play more complex WGF games, yet I appreciate playing without altitude when I want to spend more time engaged than positioning to engage. I feel like I can go either way without loss based on whatever I want to experience or who is at the table at a given time.

David Manley
11-05-2013, 16:54
With WGF, what has been the practical effect of playing one card? I imagine it feels more responsive and probably results in faster play.

Yes to both of those. To me it feels like a better representation of air combat. You are better able to react to the enemy's move but of course it is not perfect as you are still having to guess what they are going to do next and plan for that. but not so far ahead as to have those occasionally weird situations where the lumbering bomber (for example0 goes left and you plotted right and you have to wait 3 cards before you can react in your nimble hunter of the skies.

RichardPF
11-05-2013, 16:59
Yes to both of those. To me it feels like a better representation of air combat. You are better able to react to the enemy's move but of course it is not perfect as you are still having to guess what they are going to do next and plan for that. but not so far ahead as to have those occasionally weird situations where the lumbering bomber (for example0 goes left and you plotted right and you have to wait 3 cards before you can react in your nimble hunter of the skies.

I wonder if it would be reasonable to set things such that larger slower reacting craft needed to place more cards in queue than smaller more nimble craft?

7eat51
11-05-2013, 17:06
Yes to both of those. To me it feels like a better representation of air combat. You are better able to react to the enemy's move but of course it is not perfect as you are still having to guess what they are going to do next and plan for that. but not so far ahead as to have those occasionally weird situations where the lumbering bomber (for example0 goes left and you plotted right and you have to wait 3 cards before you can react in your nimble hunter of the skies.

I wonder if a hybrid would work - bombers play two cards while scouts play one. I need to learn more about WWI bomber maneuverability. Most of my reading to this point has focused on scouts.

The next time we play WGF, I am going to suggest doing one card. It will be interesting to see what happens. I think our group will actually enjoy the game more. We shall see.

I need to think how to handle this when playing OTT. Most of the time, the AI mechanism works pretty well, but I think a one card play could increase the challenge for my pilots.

You have me thinking here, my Friend.

7eat51
11-05-2013, 17:07
I wonder if it would be reasonable to set things such that larger slower reacting craft needed to place more cards in queue than smaller more nimble craft?

Maybe I am not so daft after all.

Pseudotheist
11-05-2013, 17:50
With WGF, what has been the practical effect of playing one card? I imagine it feels more responsive and probably results in faster play.
It pretty much kills the performance diversity of the various aricraft. Unless you introduce other restrictions you end up with all of the "above average" aircraft being able to do perpetual 90 degree turns and steep sideslips.

David Manley
11-05-2013, 20:35
It pretty much kills the performance diversity of the various aricraft. Unless you introduce other restrictions you end up with all of the "above average" aircraft being able to do perpetual 90 degree turns and steep sideslips.

Not if you retain the limitations on cards played within any 3 card set it doesn't.

Andy Blozinski
11-05-2013, 21:16
I wonder if it would be reasonable to set things such that larger slower reacting craft needed to place more cards in queue than smaller more nimble craft?
INTERESTING!

Maybe SOLs have to do the two card plotting, while Frigates only have to do one.

7eat51
11-05-2013, 21:34
Not if you retain the limitations on cards played within any 3 card set it doesn't.

Do you play a rotating three cards? By this I mean when I play a card, I must keep in mind the two previous cards so as not to violate any rules. For example, card number 5 cannot violate any rules when combined with cards 3 and 4. On the next turn, card number 6 cannot violate any rules when combined with cards 4 and 5, etc. So I couldn't play three stalls in a row because that would violate the number of stalls I can play in a three-card sequence. If I play a stall on card 4, I would have to wait until turn 7 to play another one? Normally, I could play a stall on my last maneuver of a given turn, and then on the second move of the subsequent turn, e.g. cards 4 and 6.

How do you handle legal moves that you would not be able to do normally due to the number of the given cards in a deck? For example, a plane might have one 90 degree right turn card. Legally, if I had three of them in my hand, I could thusly play them. Can I now do so since I am playing one card at a time?

Are my questions clear?

David Manley
11-06-2013, 03:31
Do you play a rotating three cards? By this I mean when I play a card, I must keep in mind the two previous cards so as not to violate any rules. For example, card number 5 cannot violate any rules when combined with cards 3 and 4. On the next turn, card number 6 cannot violate any rules when combined with cards 4 and 5, etc. So I couldn't play three stalls in a row because that would violate the number of stalls I can play in a three-card sequence. If I play a stall on card 4, I would have to wait until turn 7 to play another one? Normally, I could play a stall on my last maneuver of a given turn, and then on the second move of the subsequent turn, e.g. cards 4 and 6.

How do you handle legal moves that you would not be able to do normally due to the number of the given cards in a deck? For example, a plane might have one 90 degree right turn card. Legally, if I had three of them in my hand, I could thusly play them. Can I now do so since I am playing one card at a time?

Are my questions clear?

What we do is leave the last 2 cards on display along with the card yet to be played so that (on turn 3+) you have 3 cards out from the manoeuvre deck and hence unavailable to be played. It also allows you to keep tabs on tight manoeuvres and suchlike. There are probably a few wrinkles to sort out but thats essentially it.

7eat51
11-06-2013, 05:44
What we do is leave the last 2 cards on display along with the card yet to be played so that (on turn 3+) you have 3 cards out from the manoeuvre deck and hence unavailable to be played. It also allows you to keep tabs on tight manoeuvres and suchlike. There are probably a few wrinkles to sort out but thats essentially it.

Very cool. After each turn (3+), you are probably picking up the first card and putting that back into your hand; so after turn 3, there are always two visible cards and one to be played. Very cool. We will try this next time we play face-to-face. If anything, it will be fun for a game. When we do our next Illinois/Wisconsin scramble, I will run such a game as well. Thanks, David.

RichardPF
11-07-2013, 06:54
David talked about using the firing range as basically the "fundamental" size element rather than the ship model size.

While I don't know if I am comfortable abstracting that far away from the scale of the ship on the base,
it does imply that the ship on the base might not be assumed to exist at the represented size.
If based on the canon range as the fundamental scale measurement, the true ship size is very much smaller.

Using that concept (to at least some degree), the movement collision obstruction rules would be there much more because two game pieces can not occupy the same physical space rather than to avoid actual collisions.

With that in mind, it would seem that as long as at the end of the turn the bases were clear of each other, a moving ship passing a stationary ship is not that big of a deal in terms of collision avoidance.

DeRuyter
11-07-2013, 09:00
What we do is leave the last 2 cards on display along with the card yet to be played so that (on turn 3+) you have 3 cards out from the manoeuvre deck and hence unavailable to be played. It also allows you to keep tabs on tight manoeuvres and suchlike. There are probably a few wrinkles to sort out but thats essentially it.

ooh - I like this as well. I never thought about playing WGF with one card delay (like the WWII game I suppose). I will bring WGF to a convention next weekend and try it! This would also be useful for a game I run involving a lot of kids, by keeping the action/reaction moving. :thumbsup:

Eric

Diamondback
11-07-2013, 12:44
Also, in War at Sea some of us played with a House Rule where they broke each phase down into subphases... all the Battleships moved first for all players, then the Cruisers, then the Destroyers, then the Torpedo Boats, then finally you placed your airstrikes--essentially the smaller more agile craft had the advantage of seeing what the bigger ships were going to do.

You could represent the same effect as planning multiple cards by having all players with First Rates move those first, then Second, and so on, then resolve firing after the movement's done, whih might give the little guys a better chance at avoiding getting a one-volley broadside into oblivion.

Avi
11-07-2013, 14:06
... essentially the smaller more agile craft had the advantage of seeing what the bigger ships were going to do.

You could represent the same effect as planning multiple cards by having all players with First Rates move those first, then Second, and so on, then resolve firing after the movement's done, whih might give the little guys a better chance at avoiding getting a one-volley broadside into oblivion.

Roll D20 + DEX ... :takecover:

As the rules read it does not matter as you are limited to the exact movement on the card.

If there is some flexibility in the movement (house rules or something):
Go down the list for action order, each stage breaking ties of the stage above
A) Fixed Veer order
B) Wind attitude
C) Sail Setting

:steer:
Crazy House rule - allow ships with high veer to "hold" 2 similar cards and choose at their turn.
what is similar we shall leave as an exercise for the reader....

Diamondback
11-07-2013, 14:46
Actually, Avi, rate-based movement could make some difference even with fixed cards--War at Sea was just square "sectors" like a checkerboard with no facing and it gave the little guys a chance even there since it let, say, IJN tin-cans see where USN battleships were moving to and choose movements to stay out of gun range until they had all their cheeseball torpedo boosts available and ready to Munchkin it to death.

Your house rule sounds good--maybe a tweak that the lower your rating the more cards you can have available? Like say Large Merchantmen, 1st and 2nd Rates only plan their next move, 3rd and 4th Rate SOL's can have two options, 4th Rate Frigates and all 5th Rates get 3, 6th Rates and Unrated ships get 4...

Or maybe the different Rates get to pick cards from a higher range of their Veer arc--for example, theoretically we have an SOL, a 4th/5th Rate Frigate and an unrated sloop-of-war all with a 7 Veer, all starting with a Dead Straight Ahead last card played. (This is ludicrously high for an SOL, but it's for an apples-to-apples comparison.) The SOL would only select one card within +/- 7 of its last (say, commit to Full Left, Straight or Full Right), the Frigate could select two cards at or within 7 Veer difference from each other as long as neither is over 7 from last card played (for example, it can play a Straight as one and the full value of its Veer the other, or it can have Half Left and Half Right as options, trading range of movement one direction for having an option to go the other), and the sloop has a full -7 to +7 veer arc for its two cards (can select any two between Full Right and Full Left as long as neither is outside 7 Veer of last card played).

Might think of it for movement options as:
SOL= Line
Frigate = Small cone
Smaller warship = Larger cone

Also, ISTR the rule was "little guys moved last and shot first" since all damage was resolved in a Damage Phase to represent simultaneous firing, so that that way they had a chance to not just move but to get their shots off.