Any truth to the rumor Ace of Aces may get reprinted?

[sightreader]

I really miss this classic! I think I was reading a forum here, and someone mentioned that there might be a reprint of this one to celebrate some sort of anniversary or something. Has anyone heard solid info on this?

All the talk of a reprint has me thinking about working up an altitude/energy mod for the game... I think I might be able to design one that doesn't interfere with the fast pace of the game or your ability to hold on to your book!

[Kirk]

I wish it would. I remember buying the original version and having a great time with it. There aren't many games where you just grab a book and have at it.

[sightreader]

Originally Posted by Kirk

There aren't many games where you just grab a book and have at it.

No kidding. Hopefully I can dig around my cellar and find out where I put my copy of it. I have a sketch of an idea that may bring energy into the game, but I'd have to test it to make sure it doesn't interfere with the pace of the books alone.

[bsmith13]

I have the WWII version, but I learned on the E.I vs F.E.2 books. I'd love a reprint; the prices on eBay are discouraging.

[sightreader]

Well I finally found my old copies of Ace of Aces, and I'm pleased to report (to anyone who still cares) that our first prototype test of modified rules shows a great deal of promise!

By far, the most important thing the test proved was that all the added realism packed into this modification did not add significant overhead to the basic play of Ace of Aces. Yes, people had to stop and think more because their moves had a lot more consequences, but on the other hand they had a lot fewer arrows to choose from and no one had any problems with juggling fiddly extras, books, components, or deciphering what they were supposed to do next.

Another positive was that the Camel (the only plane I've modeled so far) actually flew like a Camel (aside from some boneheaded flight model inconsistencies on my part). This is also very good news, as it should be easy to extend this framework to model a lot of subtle behavior (roll rate, energy bleed, turn radius, climb/dive performance, speed, torque, etc etc) of just about anything from a Spad XIII all the way down to a Fokker EIII.



That being said, there are still a lot of kinks to work out. The most concerning thing was that planes circled too widely, causing them to fly out of range just trying to get on each other's tail. I'm worried that tightening turn radii any further might cause planes to simply pivot in place, but I haven't had time to work out what I'm actually dealing with here yet.

There were also some aesthetic concerns where the iconography created misleading perceptions of what the game mechanics should be. This included concerns that people had trouble picturing what was going on with their plane. However, as far as I can tell, these adjustments should be either cosmetic or perfective in nature, although only time will tell if working them through causes something to blow up in my face.

[ramron67]

I play Ace of Aces with my 5-year old son.
Aside from the fact that he has difficulty with numbers over 100, he is pretty good at it

[sightreader]

Originally Posted by ramron67

I play Ace of Aces with my 5-year old son.

That's one of the things I love about Ace of Aces: it's accessibility. Certainly I'm hoping the mod I make will be easily playable by 8 year olds (or astute 5 year olds... we'll see!)

[castiglione]

Originally Posted by sightreader

Well I finally found my old copies of Ace of Aces, and I'm pleased to report (to anyone who still cares) that our first prototype test of modified rules shows a great deal of promise!

I'd be very interested in taking a peek at your rules.

I have the Deluxe Rotary Set which included different flight schedules for all the air-craft which "kinda sorta" added some energy limitations to the a/c (as well as differentiated things like roll rate and also their stability as gun platforms) and a few years back, I was working on making similar individualized flight schedules for the Powerhouse planes as well as the Flying Machine planes but then I put everything off to the side as I got a headache trying to come up with flight schedules which demonstrated the relative performances of all the planes but were also consistent with the schedules in the Deluxe Rotary Set.

[sightreader]

Originally Posted by castiglione

I'd be very interested in taking a peek at your rules.

Wow, I'm flattered! Basically you have a card for every possible bank (level, left, right, vertical) and each has a picture of the arrows you can choose, color coded to show which bank follows if you pick it (thus, the same arrow can show twice but in different colors, indicating you finish in a different bank).

The process of picking an arrow also shows your speed loss relative to your enemy.

Originally Posted by castiglione

I have the Deluxe Rotary Set which included different flight schedules for all the air-craft which "kinda sorta" added some energy limitations to the a/c (as well as differentiated things like roll rate and also their stability as gun platforms)

Hmmm... I'm not sure what the Deluxe Rotary set has. The latest one I have are the Red Book versions of the Handy Rotary set.

The Handy Rotary set offers moves that offer the best possibility of finding moves that matching the physical flight of actual aircraft. I don't think I could make a realistic flight model with the Powerhouse Series - it would require some very odd teleporting behavior on part of the aircraft.

I'll be trying to make another version of this mod tightening up turning circles after I get through a series of murderous projects and tests at school.

[castiglione]

I see...so your maneuver schedules are basically like the ones used in the WWII version of Ace of Aces (they also used one's "roll state" in it to determine which maneuvers you could do).

How is energy handled in your rules?

In the Deluxe version of the Handy Rotary rules, the differing flight characteristics of the planes were handled in this fashion:

Each plane had a unique maneuver card (and there were some cards which gave a combination of a plane AND a famous ace to model the expert piloting or marksmanship of some famous pilots being able to do something which mere mortal men were incapable of doing).

It was pretty simple; if you conducted a maneuver, you would look up the maneuver on the schedule and it would tell you what maneuvers you could NOT do next turn. For example, if you did a FAST maneuver this turn, you would not be able to do a SLOW maneuver next turn (you'd just be able to do a CRUISING or FAST maneuver). Depending on what the maneuver was, you'd also be restricted in not being able to go left, right, do a fancy maneuver, etc. The maneuvers also had damage modifiers associated with them, both offensively and defensively; for example, if you did a certain maneuver and you ended up shooting at someone, the amount of damage you could do could be adversely or positively affected by the maneuver; conversely, if you ended up being shot at, the maneuver you just did could increase or decrease the amount of damage you had to take...and these modifiers would also differ for the planes as some planes were more "twitchy" than others so they'd be harder to damage...but they'd also be able to inflict less damage since they weren't steady gun platforms.

They also added a couple of more German planes because they realized the British/French/American plane set basically covered the entire air war (Nieuport 11 to the Nieuport 28) while the German plane set only covered the last year of the war (Fokker Dr. I to Fokker D.VIII). They added the Fokker D. III and the Siemens-Schuckert D. I.

Frankly...in hindsight, separating everything into rotary and in-line engine books was somewhat asinine...the Germans didn't use that many rotary engined planes compared to the Entente.