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currently tinkering with stuff for formalized air combat. some amount of abstraction/compression so that it isn't The BVR Nightmare. any thoughts?

current concept:
- air units use their own scaling, and have four altitudes (orbital, high, medium, low)
- air ranges scale by a factor of five to ground ranges (might need to be more? shrug)

most combat air units have an inbuilt weapons system or two and then hardpoints.
- weapons have arcs they can fire in, and some weapons are able to ground attack or intercept enemy attacks.
- most ammo is just tracked individually. you have like, ten missiles tops, usually.
eg a cheyenne has its gatling, its rocket pods, and then six hardpoints for missiles.

then there's defenses, which primarily reduce enemy dice.
- countermeasures, ie chaff-flares, which are ammo limited but affect all incoming attacks per round.
- jammers, which are unlimited ammo but can only target so many attacks per round.
- special defenses, which usually impose some specific conditions.
eg a cheyenne has countermeasures, jammers, and its towed array system, which limits its speed in exchange for more jammer capability.

finally, traits, which are mostly a grab bag.
eg a cheyenne has Stealth as long as its rocket pods are stowed, making long range attacks on it less effective. it has VTOL, so it can be at speed 0 and not fall out of the air. it has Starlifter, so it can go to orbit with afterburner. It has Cargo, letting it hold vehicles in exchange for a Piloting dice penalty.

EDIT: Note that I changed my mind during writing all this, so if you want to jump right to my latest thoughts, scroll down three posts. I'll keep the brainstorm-rambling here though just in case it happens to be useful, or possibly just gives people a good laugh...

Good topic, mate! I have been thinking about (but not yet tinkering with) an EVAC fighter crew campaign (inspired by the Top Guns, obviously), so this this topic interests me a lot.

I haven't really given your suggestion much thought yet, but very generally speaking, I would go for making the fightercraft gameplay as fast and easy as possible, which means as little game mechancis coming in the way as possible. Basically, I would simplify everything to the breaking point, and then let the GM handwave whatever issues might arise during play.

Specifically, _I_ would have gone for only three relative altitudes: Low (which would include ground), High, & Orbit.
As for RNG bands, I'll have to do some thinking and measuring on that, but it might be worth scaling fightercraft RNG so that (as a random example) Low Altitude only allow SHORT-LONG Fightercraft RNG (with EXTREME being reserved for High & Orbit Altitudes).

Furthermore, I would like for dogfighting to be a thing, even though it is basically an obsolete scenario in modern aerial warfare. You know, just 'cause it's cool and we all like Top Gun, so...

I would endeavor to keep ammo types & countermeasures as simple as possible. Basically, keep to one standard ammo (unless a story point demands "the third aircraft being fitted with specialist ammo" or something) and countermeasures would work against everything (just like batteries do in Alien RPG). Simple & easy is the core strength of the FL YZE, IMHO.

As for arcs and such, I would probably just ignore that or at least heavily hand-wave it. Basically, you can use a FAST Action to reposition and fire, or somesuch. Yes, that is unrealistic as f***, but I'm not here to play an fightercraft simulator

Finally, I would let a lot of tech stuff get resolved by PC dice rolling. For instance, a superior radar system gives a skill bonus and whether it detects the stealth craft or not (Stealth also being resolved as a skill bonus) just comes down to the die rolls. No tech chard comparisons, or things like that.

Very cool discussion, @RorsachFiringPatterns

Ok, I did some rough range calculations and how about this?
I am here scaling the character RNG in Alien RPG up by a factor of x400.

Recall that I want to keep the over-the-horizon distance at beyond RNG Long, which doesn’t quite work as LOW Altitude is 100m or lower, which obviously is ridiculous. But bear with me and do not overthink it )

LOW Altitude: up to 100m (yeah, that’s pretty ridiculous but this keeps over-the-horizon at around 35km, i.e., LONG RNG. Don’t overthink it! )
HIGH Altitude: up to 15km (top altitude of a F35; by comparison, “Space” starts at about 100km above the Earth)
ORBIT Altitude: up to 2000km (current anti-ICBM interceptor max range)

ENG (touch): -- Should not be applicable for air crafts (except possibly for things like mid-air tanking etc. It should have no baring in combat)
SHORT (5m): 2km
MEDIUM (25m): 10km (Stinger MANPADS can reach 8km)
LONG (100m): 40km (Hellfire missiles reach 11km; Glide Bombs launched from low altitude reach at least 40km. Note, my idea of keeping the horizon beyond RNG Long doesn’t quite work as even at just 100m above sea level, the horizon is around 35.5km away, but still…)
EXTREME (1km): 400km (JASSMs reach 360km)

How's that for a rough comparison?

Naturally, Vehicle Weapon Ranges would have to be calibrated to match (but seeing as Extreme Range in Alien RPG is 1km the range bands doesn't work for air crafts per RAW anyway, hence handwaving and such)

That said, there might be an easier way of doing this by going back to your 4-tire Altitude system.
(Yes, I am thinking out loud as I go, LOL)

If we simply make the altitudes a set distance multiplier factor, we might get away with less granularity?
(The numbers below assume fighter jets operating in the skies above an Earth-equivalent planet).

Altitudes
ORBIT Altitude (20.01km-2000km height): RNG bands reach x700*** listed distance
HIGH Altitude (10.01km-20km height): RNG bands reach x400** listed distance
MID Altitude (101m-10km height): RNG bands reach x150 listed distance
LOW Altitude (11m to 100m height): RNG bands reach x30* listed distance
SURFACE Altitude (0-10m height): RNG bands reach x1 distance (i.e., kept as is)
*This keeps the horizon (ca. 35km away) just beyond RNG Extreme for vehicle weapons at LOW Altitude, forcing fighting jets to fly at MID Altitude to fire over-the-horizon.
**JASSMs (RNG Extreme equivalent) can fire at RNG Extreme while at HIGH Altitude only
***I can’t even begin to comprehend how warfare would behave at such altitudes, so number is a blind guess.

Of course, firing weapons at these extended distances requires functioning, high-tech weapon systems and targeting computation capabilities.


Radar Detection/Reaction modifier against aircrafts
(Flying low is difficult, but can trick radars, which is why DEAD & SEAD Missions are so vital to military operations).
ORBIT Altitude: +4
HIGH Altitude: +0
MID Altitude: -4
LOW Altitude: -8
SURFACE Altitude: -12


Flying Maneuver modifiers
ORBIT Altitude: +0
HIGH Altitude: +0
MID Altitude: +0
LOW Altitude: -6 (failure might not mean a crash, but need to brake, divert, or climb to Mid Altitude)
SURFACE Altitude: -12 (failure equals a catastrophe)


Yeah... my head hurts now and I haven't a clue if any of that makes any sense...

generally speaking, I think it's easier to make sensor operations more... contextual. For example, the gamerunner can have the enemy not notice the player character(s) while they fly nape-of-earth until they get into shooting range.

WRT altitudes... Low and Medium altitude is meant to be the dangerous to aircraft but full weapons array altitude, while medium is less dangerous but restricts most guns, some rocket, etc.

WRT defenses...
- Countermeasures are basically just using Supply, I think. Going back to the Cheyenne, it has Supply 6 of Countermeasures, essentially.
- Countermeasures affect all attacks for the round, yeah. the main thing is that they aren't super effective? I have some work on dodging, but the thing I have elsewhere is beyond the scope of this.
- - Defending against say, four incoming missiles in a Cheyenne, you can deploy Countermeasures to reduce enemy Dice by -2, then pick specific missiles for your Jammers. Without the Towed Array extended, you can only pick two missiles to impose an additional -2 penalty against. While the enemy still has a chance of scoring hits, you can also dodge the same way as you'd try to do so on the ground, though this consumes your movement for the round and makes any return fire harder.

I'm... debating? a time on target mechanic. The problem is that scaling in ARPG is geometric... Zero, One, Two, Four, Many. and, obviously, not having too much cruft is ideal.

on the other hand, any large battle will probably become hard to keep track of.

I can’t even begin to comprehend how warfare would behave at such altitudes, so number is a blind guess.

But yeah overall I do agree that A2A does need some amount of compression to be accessible and interesting instead of lookup table hell. At the same time, the desire to actually do air to air warfare with rules instead of the abstraction, skill checks, and clocks I'd suggest for anyone just wanting a setpiece... I think that does speak to some? desire for crunch.

Also CONN, RADAR, SPECIAL INTEREST, BEARING 55-210, RANGE 5-5-3-2-0 METERS.

generally, warfare at the high and orbital ranges is conducted in tens of minutes. To score a hit, your weapon needs to pass through multiple layers of long range jamming, defensive missiles, individual defensive jamming, defensive energy weapons, and countermeasures. On the other hand, this is true for everything else.

For an example of 'big' digital war... Double Victory's Victory Vignettes.

First: Duke shouted over the radio, “SMITE! SMITE! Something high power is lasin’ me!” Nicholls looked over and through his HMD and saw a blinding hash-grid of infrared energy blasting his wingwoman. His aircraft’s laser warning receiver had also been tripped by the sheer power of whatever it was. It was no direct energy weapon he had ever seen. It was a… LIDAR grid? The major dreaded to think how much juice and how big an emitter was needed to paint a target from a couple of hundred miles away.
。。。
Third: The three Perc bombers showed their cards—two dozen air-launch HQ-9D Gingseng Delta surface-to-air missiles appeared at 38,000 feet, screaming upwards on lofted trajectories. The bastards had just used a mix of extremely high-powered radar and LIDAR to negate their very low observability, but looking at his RWR and LWR, Change was confident that the Mega AWACS did not have a fire-control lock.

Jesus, guys, this looks very technical and (very interesting). I'm short on time. I'll read it. It interests me. I'll get back to you.

Arthur.

I'll recommend you keep it brief and keep the altitudes to Close, High and Orbital. Simple concepts for your players to wrap their heads around. Then add in the spice of 'Reach' for all the elements in mind. This where you can add the spice to your various imagined scifi warfare vehicles.

glhf

I'll recommend you keep it brief and keep the altitudes to Close, High and Orbital. Simple concepts for your players to wrap their heads around. Then add in the spice of 'Reach' for all the elements in mind. This where you can add the spice to your various imagined scifi warfare vehicles.

glhf

my personal view is that if you want to actually do rules and air combat there's a desire for crunch and more structure. Clocks and rolls are right there for narrative/setpiece-y sort of things, if that makes sense?
Also, what does Reach mean?