The Great War in the Air - Part two

 The charts and tables

If you have looked at the original rules for Flying Circus you will have seen that those rules had a bespoke chart for each aeroplane.  That wasn't going to work with the much larger number of 'planes I had in mind so I took inspiration from another game where a generic data sheet was used and the bits that were not required were blanked out and specific data added into the relevant boxes.

The Control Sheet
You will need one of these for each aeroplane on the table with the relevant min and max data added and irrelevant parts blanked out.  You will also need some markers to track current height, speed, overspeed, ammunition  and damage.

Speed (throttle) shows the current movement points in level flight and is the speed generated by the engine.  If an aeroplane has dived it can gain additional Kinetic Energy (KE) this is acceleration due to gravity less deceleration from drag.  The maximum energy an airframe can 'store' from diving either in a Power dive (PD) or a Steep Dive (SD) is limited by a number of factors.  Lets lump all of those together as 'drag'.  That number is recorded in the Max KE box while the KE which is gained by diving is shown in the Kinetic Energy gain and loss section gains by power diving or steep diving on the left side and conversely the amount lost each turn in level flight (LF) or climbing is on the right .  If the airframe is storing kinetic energy it is tracked on the extra speed from diving track  This energy can be useful or may risk damage if the 'plane exceeds the VNE speed (velocity never exceed) as recorded in the VNE box.  Aeroplanes may also accelerate under power (Throttling up) or decelerate by cutting power and letting drag have it's effect.  The maximum number of movement points that can be gained or lost in a turn by these actions is recorded in the movement maximum gain and loss area.

Height is tracked using a counter on the three height tracks one shows 50 feet increments up to 1,000 feet, one 1,000 feet increments up to 10,000 feet and the last is in increments of 10,000 feet.  To track current height you need three counters one on each track.  Of course all aeroplanes have a maximum ceiling which is recorded to the left of the height tracks along with a box to record the maximum climb rate of the aeroplane.  Note that some manoeuvres can have an effect on the altitude of the 'plane.

Turn codes are the number of hex sides that can be moved through in a single hex and the cost per side in movement points and the number of hexes required in forward flight before making the next turn.  Turn codes A- D are as in Flying Circus.  I added extra more sluggish turns for larger aeroplanes These are turn codes E and F.  Code E costs one movement point for the first hex side and can only turn one hex side in a single hex.  Turn code F costs two movement points for the first hex side and can only turn one hex side in a single hex.  In both codes E and F the aeroplane must move forwards one movement point before making another turn.

The Statistics
You may not agree with some, or all of these and I can't be certain that they are anywhere close to actual performance data.  This is because I tried to find formulas which gave me the same stats as Flying Circus provided for it's original list of aeroplanes.  To do that I had to work with what data was actually available.  I could calculate secondary stats like lift area and power to weight ratios, but its all a bit vague really. Actual aircraft designers should probably look away now! What it does do is generate different data for different 'planes and in general scouts perform better than two seaters perform better than multi-engine types.  In general early war craft are more fragile that later war stuff.  V- strut sesquiplanes with smaller lower wings than upper are also a riskier proposition especially in steep dives but gain lift and turn rate as well as improved downwards visibility.

I used some ludicrously complex formulas to generate some kind of differences between the various aeroplanes and added some wild approximations as well.  Feel free to change anything you like, after all its all pseudoscience really!  What I have is a complicated spreadsheet but more on that next time as it really needs a post of its own, which is code for I need to tidy it up so it makes sense to people other than me!