Matrix Games Forums

I just remembered something

Bomber pilots had missions to fly, once set number of missions were flown, there tour of duty was over, of course, it went from 25 to 35 to 50

Looking over some pics, see a number of "Crewmembers" who flew over 100 missions

remember also, that High Command could pull missions away, after they were flown, if they were seen to be nothing missions

Now Fighter Pilot opens up a whole new can of worms

they didn't count missions, they counted hours, tours of duty were based on the number of "Combat Hours" flown

how do we set this up with in a game system ?

ORIGINAL: Hard Sarge

I just remembered something

Bomber pilots had missions to fly, once set number of missions were flown, there tour of duty was over, of course, it went from 25 to 35 to 50

Looking over some pics, see a number of "Crewmembers" who flew over 100 missions

remember also, that High Command could pull missions away, after they were flown, if they were seen to be nothing missions

Now Fighter Pilot opens up a whole new can of worms

they didn't count missions, they counted hours, tours of duty were based on the number of "Combat Hours" flown

how do we set this up with in a game system ?

I think it is probably not worth worrying about. The few missions that were non-attributable were early aborts, or marginal combat missions (mine laying etc). We do not have mine laying in the game, and early aborts (prior to crossing the enemy coast) are rare so in effect you could ignore that whole issue. I guess the 'bomb UK' decoy missions shouldn't count, but I personally don't use them much (I would rather bomb a coastal target than cross the coast then come back without bombing, and most Axis players wont be bothered by a decoy that doesn't penetrate). A decoy almost to Hamburg counts as a mission as far as I am concerned!

For fighters, you could either track cumulative time in the air (probably a big tear up), or just count missions. For historic setting up purposes, count a mission as a standard length for each plane type (1 hr for Spit, 3 hrs for P47 4 hrs for P51 or something). Set the tour lengths to suit initially, and then count in missions as I said. The player could set desired tours in missions, or in hours which would be converted in the same way (since we are going for gloss here, I guess in hours)

I agree that the Allied plotting issues need to be addressed, with more tools for the allies such as the ability to save plots, add more waypoints, and better assign/manage escorts for example.