Concerning High Altitude Fighter Sweeps

[rustysi]

ORIGINAL: Chickenboy

ORIGINAL: DanSez

Just for maintaining 'historic flavor' I tend to recommend a 3 tiered cap to reflect the rise of service ceiling and increased capabilities as the war progressed

1941/1942 Top altitude 25k
1943/1944 Top altitude 30k
1945/1946 Top altitude 35k

easy to remember, easy to set

some people don't like any rules, I am sure you will hear from them soon

Something akin to this is a HR in my games too. With a further reminder that only recon planes are granted exception to high flying (but that's not a fighter sweep, is it?).

One of my Allied PBEM partners' (Joseph-aka 'SqzMyLemon') ongoing beefs with the high altitude uber-sweep involved the handcuffing of the lower CAP to be forced to accept any combat. IRL, fighters flying low CAP could have refused combat if they found themselves in a poor tactical environment. The game mandates engagement in an unfriendly engagement envelope and applies the requisite hard-coded bonuses for those at superior altitude.

Better to omit this silliness and the silly ahistoric workarounds altogether by homogenizing sweep altitude max settings. In a HR if necessary.

+1

With the caveat that I prefer these altitudes.

42 20k.
43 25k
44 31k

Not much different.

[Big B]

Ok, thank you everyone for your input.
What I decided was this;
Instead of imposing mandatory ceilings - that would correspond to realistic altitude ceilings - data-wise, I decided to expand a bit on ceilings of aircraft.
As several have said - "don't get hung up on numbers, let it work as an abstract of altitude performance" - what I decided to do was stretch ceilings for some aircraft to let them fly and fight at slightly higher altitudes than book numbers, so essentially we don't have a situation where some aircraft (fighters only) are restricted to altitudes in the 20'000's while others operate in the 30'000's.
In reality all aircraft operated fighter missions at max 25,000-29,000. But now, all can operate at 32,000 to 40,000 depending on the model and year... the ultimate in disregarding real ceilings.
Some, the best high altitude fighters can fly a bit higher than others that are older in design - but altitude has been equalized.

This should negate the need for House Rules, and faithfully recreate capabilities.

B