Age of Dogfights: WWII

Print and Play - main part
almost 2 years ago – Thu, Feb 02, 2023 at 11:19:49 AM

While we are working on the game rules, we have prepared the majority of Print and Play files. The files have just been distributed through BackerKit pledge manager, and they include aircraft tokens, control panels, board, task markers, STL files and other elements that are finished in design. The rest of the PnP files (rulebook, scenarios, etc.) will be prepared and sent later, when the final version of the rules is written.
 

In the next update, we will publish the progress of the rulebook.

Finished design of control panels
about 2 years ago – Tue, Jan 10, 2023 at 01:40:51 PM

In the last period, we have printed all the stickers for aircraft tokens.

Now those stickers are being cut on our plotter, and they will soon be attached to plastic tokens (only for backers who ordered the Pre-assembled set).

Simultaneously, we have been working on the control panel design.

We will wait a little longer before sending the control panel sheets to print so that we can check thoroughly for misspelling or design errors (if any).

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After each Kickstarter project, Forsage Games invested in its own production facilities. This gives us as authors the freedom to create games entirely according to the original ideas, as we do not have to adapt components to manufacturer templates of any sort. In this field, we have also shown innovation and creativity, for example, altitude stands have proven to be simple, reliable, very practical and relatively cheap to manufacture. When games and expansions are produced in our workshop, we can start production without a large order size, which is something we would have to do when using the services of some big printing house in Serbia, China or some other country. That's why we can offer many expansions (primarily related to the existing and upcoming games of the Age of Dogfights series). We have acquired some machinery and tools and leased or purchased enough space to allow us to independently manufacture most components in large or small batches. Due to all the above-mentioned reasons, we intend to keep investing in production capacities in the coming period as well.

Most of the game components for AoD2 have been finished a long time ago, and while waiting for the authors to finish the final version of the rulebook, we have some unused production capacity. This creates additional costs for us, so we decided to set in motion some of our "old" projects. These are mostly simple games that belong to the category of children's or family games. Before we started our Kickstarter journey, we created several dozen such games that were intended primarily for the domestic (Serbian) market.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgamedesigner/80163/predrag-lazovic

Only some of those games (Mini Golf and Water polo) got adapted for the global market a few years ago, but they never had their own Kickstarter campaign or any promotion or advertisement.

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/174235/mini-golf
https://www.gamesforsage.com/product-page/mini-golf

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/174596/water-polo-light-edition
https://www.gamesforsage.com/product-page/water-polo

We believe these games are exceptional in their respective categories, so they will too have their own campaign on Kickstarter, with only minimal changes and additions to the current versions. The project will be led by a new member of our Forsage Games team - Stefan. Given that this existing account Forsage Games on Kickstarter became recognized for war and battle-themed games - we decided to create a new account: Forsage Light Games, which will be involved in campaigns for games of other categories. The first campaign can be expected at the end of January or the beginning of February this year. We hope that some of our "old" backers will also support this project, as it would mean a lot to the survival and further development of our company.

Update #27
about 2 years ago – Fri, Dec 23, 2022 at 08:40:28 AM

The authors continue to work on wrapping up the final version of the rulebook. In the previous period, among other things, a lot of time (more than planned) was spent on determining the final characteristics of all aircraft from the base game. In addition to those, the characteristics of many aircraft from the expansions have been established, especially the ones that appear several times in different versions. Also, the aircraft drawings from the base game are finalized.

For some aircraft types that either had only one production version or don't notably differ in characteristics between versions, the version mark is omitted and we have chosen to show drawings of the most famous or most numerous version (e.g. Me 410, He 177, Do 24, Swordfish, etc.). This way they can, depending on the scenario and the period in which the battle takes place, represent various versions of the aircraft. On the other hand, aircraft that had different versions are represented as a specific version and sometimes, if needed, a sub-version. For example, the Bf 109 appears in following versions (in various expansions): D, E-1, E-1/B, E-3, E-3a, E-4, E-4/B, E-5, E-7, F-2, F-4/Trop, G-4, G-6/U4, G-10, H-1 and K-4.

At the beginning of the project, we planned to determine and implement around twenty characteristics for each aircraft type: speed, number of full throttle uses, booster, agility, ability to perform sharp turns and aerobatics, service ceiling, climb speed, descent speed, diving ability, type of weapons and firepower, ammunition capacity (number of bursts) and optional variable firepower after several bursts, firing directions and firepower for defensive machine guns, endurance, durability, ability to carry load, ability to take photos. During the work on the rules, we decided to introduce a few more characteristics (stall speed, ability to fly zig-zag, reduced durability from the front if the plane has a vulnerable glass nose, etc). All the characteristics affect aircraft’s ability to carry out their tasks - dogfight, bombing, reconnaissance, etc.

The older of the two authors of the game (Predrag) has been passionately collecting and reading aviation literature (he owns several hundred books, magazines and models) for fifty years. He gained a lot of knowledge about aircraft construction and flight mechanics while studying Aeronautical Engineering at Belgrade University. Prior knowledge is necessary to analyse and finally determine the characteristics of all the aircraft, since there is a lot of information that is vague, incorrect, controversial, or at least unverified (especially on the Internet). All that data had to be converted into compatible numbers to fit the rules of the game. The result is a game where aircraft use their advantages (e.g. higher speed, or better maneuvrability, or better climbing, etc.) just like in real air battles.

The most basic aircraft data from different sources mostly matches, but there are also some that contradicts. It is difficult to get to the facts about some less important characteristics (e.g. stall speed) especially for less important planes. Some data, for example for speed and climbing speed are given in different units of measurement, but it is all easy to convert. A slightly more complex calculation is to determine the rate of climb when there is only a small amount of data, for example, that a certain aircraft type climbs, say, to an altitude of 10,000 feet in 14 minutes, and although it's easy to calculate the average rate of climb, sometimes it's not comparable with data for other aircraft.

A separate problem is data that is almost non-existent in the literature. Here, above all, we mean maneuverability in the horizontal plane (the "agility" characteristic in this game). If there is some data, it is mostly incomparable with data on any other aircraft. Maneuverability can be expressed in the time it takes for the aircraft to complete a 180 or a 360-degree turn; for some aircraft, there is information about the minimum turn radius, but even such data must be accompanied (and most often they are not) by additional information such as at which altitude the turn is performed, at what speed, with what load (full or half empty tank, additional load, etc.), and again it needs to be comparable with other data in order to be useful.

Since we now have a way to make fine differences in agility between aircraft types (as described in the Update 22), it became more difficult to decide the values. For example, the information for the Focke-Wulf Fw 189 found in literature says that it was "very agile for a twin-engined aircraft", but now an assessment has to be made on whether it is more agile than the single-engined Thunderbolt fighter (P-47), which was described as a "flying brick''. Various versions of a certain type of aircraft are also a problem. In general, the newer versions of the aircraft got stronger (and heavier) engines, so they were faster than the older versions, but due to the increased weight, they were also less agile. For each subversion, it was necessary to assess if they lost enough agility in reality to make a difference in the game.

It is widely believed that the British Hurricane Mk I and Spitfire Mk I fighters were more agile than the Messerschmitt Bf 109 E during the Battle of Britain. However, when all the calculations are made based on the geometric and aerodynamic characteristics of those aircraft, the conclusion is that the Messerschmitt was certainly more maneuverable than the Hurricane, and probably than the Spitfire as well. Author Len Deighton proves this in his book "Fighter". However, when some other factors are taken into account, such as the strength of the aircraft (the wings in particular), the psychology of the pilots and the tactical circumstances during the Battle of Britain, we can reach a different conclusion. The Messerschmitt Bf 109 had relatively fragile wings. Only the version (E) had cannons in the wings, which had a double negative effect on strength: increased wing weight and vibrations due to firing. Sometimes (although very rarely) the plane's wings broke during sharp maneuvers. German pilots knew this, so they avoided exposing their aircraft to the maximum load by turning too sharp. During air combat, the most common tactical situation was the following: the British fighters were directed at the German bombers, and they entered the fight while they were still in the climbing phase, and the German escort fighters were at a much higher altitude. Using the height and additional speed in the dive, the Messerschmitts attacked the British fighters from above. After the first surge, they would return to the fight in a rapid climb using the inertia gained from the previous dive. It’s for these reasons that they emphasized combat and maneuvering in the vertical plane, not because they were afraid of nimble British fighters. The British had an additional reason to avoid fighting in the vertical plane - the carburetors in the Merlin engines of their fighters skipped one stroke during a sudden transition into a dive, which would have caused them to lose speed for a short time. All in all, regardless of the cause, the fact is that the British preferred fighting in the horizontal, and the Germans in the vertical plane. The authors, taking everything into account, decided that Spitfires Mk I have slightly better maneuverability than the Messerschmitt Bf 109 E.

A similar problem exists with durability. Data for durability, if there is any at all, are mostly flat-out descriptive: very strong, strong, weak construction and the like. To assign a value for durability, aircraft are divided into categories: single-engine, twin-engine, multi-engine. We took into account whether the planes have engines with water cooling (in-line engines) or air cooling (radial engines), and also whether the planes have armored parts. Some commonly known facts, for example, that Japanese aircraft are very fragile, that the P-47 was known for its exceptional strength, and the like were also considered.

All real characteristics are converted into numerical values according to some tables or criteria. For example, the value for firepower takes into account the number, caliber and rate of fire of guns. The value of firepower must have some logical correlation with the values of durability. The descriptions of battles from books written by fighter pilots (Pierre Klosterman, Saburo Sakai, Peter Townsend, Alexander I. Pokryshkin, V. F. Golubev) are very important, for example, the one that it would have taken several Zero planes to fire long bursts at the B-17 in order to shoot it down.

We have made an effort to find at least two independent sources for each piece of information. Even so, we cannot claim with 100% certainty that all data is absolutely correct. If we find new, reliable data that would be different from what is currently available, the subsequent editions of the AoD:WWII game will feature that change.

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With the drawings and features of the aircraft complete, the token stickers are to be printed soon, and after that, the control panels. Drawings of tokens with written characteristics will be inserted into the rulebook examples, so in the next update, we will publish the pages that fully show the movement of the aircraft.

Once again, we are extremely grateful for your patience, which is allowing us to complete the rules for this very demanding and large game the best we can.

Update #26
about 2 years ago – Sun, Nov 20, 2022 at 10:59:51 AM

We know that you are all impatiently waiting for us to finish the production of the game and start shipping. In the previous period, we made significant progress. You already know that almost all the physical elements have been produced. We took a long time writing the final version of the rules, but we think the end result will fully justify the delay. In earlier updates, we have already announced that this game's hardware and software (a large number of diverse elements and improved rules) will offer many possibilities to play large scale games according to very detailed and complex scenarios that will depict historical battles in a very realistic way or present some entirely fictional situations. In parallel with the rules, we are also working on a separate scenarios book.

Additionally, we made an effort to give several suggestions for games that are short and simple, in which a relatively small number of aircraft participate. We are now showing a few pages from the rulebook that show how players can set up such games and give a few particular examples. Please note that these are not scenarios, as they will be in a separate book and will be much more detailed.

Update No. 25
over 2 years ago – Tue, Sep 27, 2022 at 09:57:20 PM

On this occasion, we inform the backers that we're working diligently on this project. We have encountered some difficulties that are slowing us down, so we cannot give specific estimates about the start of shipping.

Due to the obvious delay, we considered the possibility of making the game (rules and elements) within the framework of what was promised at the beginning of the campaign, and after delivering the rewards to all backers, we would finalize an expanded second edition that would contain all the additions that we have developed and announced in the meantime. However, we established that the Kickstarter backers should immediately receive a complete, full version of the game. When we think like businessmen - it's bad for us, because it induces additional costs and problems in organizing the work due to a lot of idle periods. Thereby, we are at the risk that the backers will lose their trust in us due to delayed shipping period, but we, as authors, certainly want the first edition of this game to be the best possible version, and it would be fair to you, backers, to get the full version of the game right away. The practice in our previous campaigns was to actively engage the backers in the process of creating the final version of the game, and again, during this campaign, we adopted many of your suggestions and adapted them to our vision, so, in a way, you are also part of the creative team. That's one more reason we want you to get the full version. The extremely favorable reviews we received for the previous project (AoD:WWI) oblige us in a way to make this new, more advanced game also an excellent product.

The introduction of new game elements (detailed actions Air - Surface and Surface - Air) allow simulating almost all possible actions of air forces during WWII. The possibilities for playing in the most diverse scenarios are almost unlimited. All these new elements in the game do not affect our motto MCMD /Minimum Complexity - Maximum Diversity/. Simply put, many rules are optional and the players who prefer shorter and smoother games do not have to apply them.  Again, true enthusiasts and connoisseurs of the history of air battles will have all the elements to try out all the great and demanding tactical variants.

We are aware that you are all anxiously waiting for your copy of the game, and that your displeasure due to the delay is completely justified. We hope that you will have enough patience to allow us to complete the work on this project in full focus, without additional tensions. Furthermore, we are sure that at the end of this, everybody will be satisfied with the result.