In the cradle

[joseki]

Been talking about balloons that hit the ground. By the pics I've seen there isn't a cradle. So I'm curious about that phrase. Also can you shoot a ballon on the ground? I wouldn't think they would deflate that quickly.

Interested in your thoughts.

[albpilot]

May 31, 2008 23:52:37 GMT -5 joseki said:

Been talking about balloons that hit the ground. By the pics I've seen there isn't a cradle. So I'm curious about that phrase. Also can you shoot a ballon on the ground? I wouldn't think they would deflate that quickly.

Interested in your thoughts.

Sure you can shoot a balloon on the ground, just like a truck or an AA gun. The debate will center around whether it should be treated like a ground emplacement or an aerial target (we in Indy still treat it as an aerial target) and whether or not you get a kill if you blow one up on the ground (which Indy grants). If you can get your plane down to 50 ft to blow up a balloon and survive all the AA on the way down, you deserve a kill on it in my opinion.

[Stephen]

See the Indy House Rules page. Our rule is posted there and (most of us) like it. I think its a good rule, and it has substantial historical precedent.

[kazorm]

Item#1: A deflated balloon was not a kill. It would be patched up and back in the air in a couple of hours. It had to blow up, or burn to be credited.

Item #2: Credited kills were air to air kills. A balloon on the ground can be shot at, but it CAN NOT be credited as a kill, as it is NOT in the air!!!

[albpilot]

Jun 5, 2008 13:34:01 GMT -5 kazorm said:

Item#1: A deflated balloon was not a kill. It would be patched up and back in the air in a couple of hours. It had to blow up, or burn to be credited.

Item #2: Credited kills were air to air kills. A balloon on the ground can be shot at, but it CAN NOT be credited as a kill, as it is NOT in the air!!!

Looks like Ken is in the 'don't like' camp on this one...

[Stephen]

On 14 September 1918 over Boinville, France, Lt. Tommie Lennon, 2Lt Frank Luke and Lt. Leo Dawson deflated a balloon that had already been hauled to the ground during the assault. Luke described it in his combat report as being on the ground "in very flabby condition." It was awarded to all three pilots as a kill (Lennon's first, Luke's second) in General Order #6 on 30 September.

E V Rickenbacker also was credited with a balloon that was deflated, not burned, while it was already on the ground. Numerous other US and British pilots were awarded similar claims.

On 16 September 1918, 2Lt. Frank Luke attacked a balloon over Reville at 1903 hrs. The balloon was hauled safely to the ground and only burned after Luke continued his attack even though the balloon was "in its bed." It was confirmed four days later in General Order #7 as his seventh kill.

There were many other instances in WWI where deflated balloons were counted as confirmed kills even though the balloon was on the ground and did not burn.

The patching process on balloons did not allow them to be instantly fixed and back in the air in a few hours; it was much more complicated than that. Each German balloonzug was assigned two drachens, one for front line use and the other held in reserve. When a balloon was attacked, rather than "instantly" fixing the damaged balloon and putting it back in the air, the reserve balloon was inflated (taking considerable time, and that's assuming the poorly equipped German units had hydrogen gas on hand to inflate it). The primary balloon would not be put back into service for some time until repairs could be made.

However, the time span necessary to mend an aircraft had nothing to do with whether it was awarded as a kill or not. For instance, when a perfectly good airplane was forced down due to a pilot wound, it was counted as a kill even though the plane was capable of flying again instantly. Total destruction - or even partial damage - to the plane was unnecessary and irrelevant.

We tend to think that World War I was governed by a uniform set of standards that applied to all units in all forces, but nothing could be further from the truth. There was no set "rule" on how balloons could be destroyed or confirmed. When a pilot attacked a balloon, in many cases he turned in a claim. That claim was reviewed subjectively by an officer who was not governed by any set, written rules, and he made a subjective decision at the moment.

Ken, I understand your opposition to the rule and you have made some very good points. However, the two you mention above are not among them. Deflated balloons were frequently confirmed as kills. Balloons on the ground were frequently confirmed as kills. The time span that a balloon was out of service had no bearing whatsoever on the staff's decision on whether to award the confirmation or not. A balloon did not have to burn before it was confirmed. Those statements are demonstrably false.

If you think the game plays better without this rule, that's fine, and I respect your opinion. But the assertion that it is historically inaccurate is groundless and false.

[noski]

I find it interesting how the Indy SQD can take a stand on 'historical accuracy' like this to alter the game and then ignore historical accuracies like changing % roll for pilot survival on a rough wing set down to alter the game because you don't like losing a pilot to a 'silly' rule even though it is historically accurate that pilots died in such a manner. Not trying to start a fight ,,, just an observation

Dan

[albpilot]

Jun 22, 2008 13:57:33 GMT -5 noski said:

I find it interesting how the Indy SQD can take a stand on 'historical accuracy' like this to alter the game and then ignore historical accuracies like changing % roll for pilot survival on a rough wing set down to alter the game because you don't like losing a pilot to a 'silly' rule even though it is historically accurate that pilots died in such a manner. Not trying to start a fight ,,, just an observation

Dan

While there is a certain validity to saying the pilot survival chances were expanded just to mollify bad feelings of people who have lost pilots to light wounds, you may not see where this is coming from. In refuting Ken, Stephen produced data that does support his contention and the resulting rule change that gives a kill to a pilot blowing up a balloon on the ground. What percentage of times did this really happen? None of us knows, but it is not very high vs the total number of balloon kills scored, and I will also note that even with enacting this rule no one in Indy has scored a kill with it yet. Likewise, pilots were lost under the circumstances described by the hit rules, but again, what is the percentage vs the total number so lost? Was it as high as the number of pilots lost by DP players over the years under such limited circumstances? Probably not. So, in putting these two rules in place, we try to make the gaming experience more closely resemble reality without making things too unplayable.

Am I in favor of allowing a player to wiggle around just to save his pilot under suspicious and arbitrary rule changes? Not at all. Am I in favor of looking at ways of doing things that can maybe even out the fact that Indy runs the most deadly game in DP? If it makes sense to do so. In fact, I'll go so far as to say that if Indy's pilots start surviving at a higher rate than other groups and start earning more kills than other groups I'd look at rescinding any rules causing that. But to say that the rule chages you cite above are a huge issue is to grossly overstate how often they'll even come into effect.

[Stephen]

Jun 22, 2008 13:57:33 GMT -5 noski said:

I find it interesting how the Indy SQD can take a stand on 'historical accuracy' like this to alter the game and then ignore historical accuracies like changing % roll for pilot survival on a rough wing set down to alter the game because you don't like losing a pilot to a 'silly' rule even though it is historically accurate that pilots died in such a manner. Not trying to start a fight ,,, just an observation

Dan

I voted in favor of changing the rough wing setdown rules because it is historically inaccurate for pilots to die from a failure to crash.

I've heard people claim that a rough landing could have cracked a strut, the splinter of which may have ricocheted off a nearby rock, thereby altering its trajectory and causing it to pass through the fuselage at an angle sufficient to go directly thru the pilot's heart... but in 30 years of studying WWI aviation, I never heard of it.

The milder rough wing setdown is a full, complete landing with a plane that remains in flying condition and in most cases is capable of taking off again immediately. I've heard of pilots who died from crashing, but never one who died because he didn't crash.

No sarcasm intended, but surely, if it were historically accurate, we would have heard of many pilot fatalities that occurred after failing to crash? If one subscribes to the theory that "the pilot must have bumped his head and it killed him," then one can only imagine the widespread fatalities that must have occurred from thermals and turbulence.

The truth is that rough landings usually broke a shock cord. There are many such occurrences listed in the maintenance records of the 1st Pursuit Group. The price of a new shock cord was 75 cents and it took half an hour to install. Other rough landings would occasionally dig a wing into the dirt (this, specifically, is what occurs in a Dawn Patrol Rough Wing Setdown #1, the same as a ground loop except it occurs during landing), resulting in a spar check, wire tension re-set, and fabric patching. Maybe an hour's work if you took your time. I have never run across a single fatality resulting from such a landing.

If someone can show me where pilots routinely keeled over as a result of not crashing in such a manner, I'll change my tune completely. But it just makes no sense.

The other Rough Setdown, in which the landing gear is lost? Okay, maybe, on a bad day, if you've already used up 8 of your 9 lives, you have a weak heart and you didn't eat your Lucky Charms that morning, you might find a way to die. Yes, yes... Austro-Hungarian ace Rudolf Szepessy-Sokoll was killed in such a crash... I know. But he had already received a fatal wound from a bullet directly through the spine. In every actual instance that I can think of in which a pilot died from the equivalent of Setdown #2, the pilot had been severely wounded before the landing. Even then, the odds of dying as a direct result of such a rough setdown are microscopic, but at least there was something remotely resembling a crash and a weak argument can be constructed.

Not so with the ordinary rough wing setdown. IMHO it needed to be changed, especially at a squadron that already plays an extraordinarily deadly version of the game.

[AP]

Boy it sure will be nice when we have a new rulebook that comes out so poor old v7 rules don’t struggle to stay valid anymore ...
Another way to look at it-
It’s historically accurate that many 'rough wing setdowns' happened, to varying different degrees.
For game sake purposes, lets say you have a 75% chance to land, you roll a 74- squeaked in! End of story for the game, but for 'historical purposes' this easily could have been a rough wing setdown where nothing went wrong.

If you roll the 76 though, you crash. Plain & simple, in the game its a crash. It is labeled in the game as a 'rough wing setdown', so not a very bad crash, but still a crash. The plane may be fine, but the pilot could hit his head, cut an artery, etc....the possibilities are endless. The fact remains that it was a crash, and in the game (and in reality for that matter) there is always a chance to die if you crash, no matter what happens to the plane.
If you take away the chance to die from a crash, you are giving yourself a 'mulligan' if you roll a '1' on the crash roll and might as well say you didnt crash, which doesnt really work.
Don't forget the standing rules do take into consideration how bad the crash was, and you get a +10 or -10 based on how bad... so a modification is pre-built into the rules.
IMHO, if you are revising rules to accomdate a revision you have already made to the rules, it starts to sound like a monty python sketch ;D & it might as well be playing a different game.

[Stephen]

Jun 26, 2008 12:23:33 GMT -5 AP said:

Another way to look at it-
It’s historically accurate that many 'rough wing setdowns' happened, to varying different degrees.
For game sake purposes, lets say you have a 75% chance to land, you roll a 74- squeaked in! End of story for the game, but for 'historical purposes' this easily could have been a rough wing setdown where nothing went wrong.

Okay. That's fairly workable.

If you roll the 76 though, you crash. Plain & simple, in the game its a crash. It is labeled in the game as a 'rough wing setdown', so not a very bad crash, but still a crash.

That's not. Actually, in the rules its deemed an "unsuccessful landing," i.e., a landing, but not one that went exactly as planned.

The notion that one can be involved in an airplane crash and then simply start the engine and fly off again - or that DP rules are specifically designed to facilitate such a thing - is ludicrous. Imagine this -

Tower to pilot: "What happened?"

Pilot: "It was terrible! We crashed into this field in rural France!"

Tower: "How many fatalities?"

Pilot: "None. We just kept flying."

If you heard the above quotes in any other situation than this discussion, you would consider it a rather dumb joke. And rightfully so.

The plane may be fine, but the pilot could hit his head, cut an artery, etc....the possibilities are endless.

True, that could have happened. But essentially, it didn't. These alleged examples of historical accuracy are so far fetched as to be unbelievable to any rational viewpoint.

I am willing to be wrong, but I would ask that a list of fatalities in WWI be submitted to demonstrate it. If the possibilities are really so vast and endless, to the point that dipping a wing into the ground or suffering a hard landing can be so instantly fatal, then it should be no problem at all to supply 50-100 such instances out of the thousands and thousands of pilots who flew during the war, performing hundreds of thousands of individual landings. Again, if I'm wrong, please produce the evidence of such mass fatalities.

There should also be a similar historical fatality list for other equally dangerous bumps which could lead to a pilot hitting his head or cutting an artery, such as violent turbulence and thermals during flight. These fatalities should also be in the game, so that passing through turbulent cloud formations should now require a roll for pilot death.

As you can see, this quickly gets too ridiculous to take seriously.

The fact remains that it was a crash

The rules disagree.

I do find it interesting, however, that squadrons that have no time limit on moves, and/or no limitation on reverse movement, no defense to face from rear gunners and no point blank range shooting are so adamant that Indy is granting itself an unfair advantage by removing the possibility that a pilot could die from a failure to crash.

If these squadrons were truly interested in genuinely balancing the playing field, wouldn't they have steadfastly insisted fifteen years ago that Indy do something to lower the mortality risk of its pilots under such dangerous rules? I mean, if we're really, truly concerned about balancing things... ?

And where are all the accusations of "mulligans" and historical accuracy for squadrons where you can move your plane twenty times in a row until you get it right? Or take ten minutes to make your twenty second move? Or go your entire DP career without facing a point blank range shot?

Nearly every other squadron in the nation gets twenty or thirty mulligans for every player in every single game compared to Indy, yet not a word is breathed on the topic for more than a decade. Hmmm.

The silence on this issue is deafening, and makes it difficult to believe that the detractors in this discussion were ever seriously concerned about mulligans, history, or balanced play.

[noski]

My point, is , on one hand Indy will stand on history to change a rule and then change another by ignoring history. Much reaserch went into these rules and I doubt MC , off the top of his head decided , 'Hmm, Ihave never heard of of a pilot dying from a rough wing set down but I'll put it in the rules anyway.' I f you think that is the way it is you discredit MC's intelligence,
As far as a rough set down killing some one... a 37 year old man in the Kalamazoo area died after falling out of golf cart lasr week. I don't think a golf cart can reach 20mph. In Hawaii last year, a motocycle cop escorting GW Bush's motorcade died after crashing at 10mph by driving over a curb into the grass . He didn't hit a tree or parking meter or anything else. Just a big green lawn.
The historical record has to be there , otherwise it would be in the game . Maybe Indy should look a little harder at history before changing a rule rather than expecting the rest of the DP world to prove them wrong after the fact.

[AP]

Yeah i am still w/ Dan on this one. It doesnt really matter if its called a 'crash' or 'unsuccessful landing ' , it still = something went wrong, which could include injury & death.

I wont argue that it probably didnt historically happen all that often, but that shouldnt even be part of the discussion, because we are talking about a rule involving a game mechanic. not re-inacting historical events.
This game has many inaccuracies that can be mulled over, but the fact remains that it is a game, and M.C. spent years developing the mechanics of the game to flow well...and to make a fun game, not an accurate historical reinactment.
Again, changing rules because they dont fit other changed rules is just going to be a snowball effect, and you end up with a different game. If Indy decides they want to play a different game & add rules for time limits & not allowing players to count out moves more than once etc., thats their choice and certainly makes a different and more challenging game.
Expecting those that dont play that way to accept the changing of standard rules based on Indy's custom game rule - I think thats where the issue is.

If I play monopoly with my family, & we decide to change the rules so players start with $50 instead of $200 to make it more 'economically realistic', and then take away all the penalty chance cards because they don't work well with my $50 rule, do I go play at a friends house expect everyone I play with to always take out these penalty cards too even if they dont play with the $50 rule?
Probably not. My game might be more fun for me, and my rules might work better in my game system, but when everyone else plays by and is used to one set of written rules, they are probably not going to welcome 'write in' changes to those rules. Expecting people to conform to and accept my rules just isnt going to happen, because everyone is used to the system writen in the rulebook that has worked just fine for years.

[albpilot]

Jun 30, 2008 9:23:36 GMT -5 AP said:

Yeah i am still w/ Dan on this one. It doesnt really matter if its called a 'crash' or 'unsuccessful landing ' , it still = something went wrong, which could include injury & death.

I wont argue that it probably didnt historically happen all that often, but that shouldnt even be part of the discussion, because we are talking about a rule involving a game mechanic. not re-inacting historical events.
This game has many inaccuracies that can be mulled over, but the fact remains that it is a game, and M.C. spent years developing the mechanics of the game to flow well...and to make a fun game, not an accurate historical reinactment.
Again, changing rules because they dont fit other changed rules is just going to be a snowball effect, and you end up with a different game. If Indy decides they want to play a different game & add rules for time limits & not allowing players to count out moves more than once etc., thats their choice and certainly makes a different and more challenging game.
Expecting those that dont play that way to accept the changing of standard rules based on Indy's custom game rule - I think thats where the issue is.

If I play monopoly with my family, & we decide to change the rules so players start with $50 instead of $200 to make it more 'economically realistic', and then take away all the penalty chance cards because they don't work well with my $50 rule, do I go play at a friends house expect everyone I play with to always take out these penalty cards too even if they dont play with the $50 rule?
Probably not. My game might be more fun for me, and my rules might work better in my game system, but when everyone else plays by and is used to one set of written rules, they are probably not going to welcome 'write in' changes to those rules. Expecting people to conform to and accept my rules just isnt going to happen, because everyone is used to the system writen in the rulebook that has worked just fine for years.

You point is very well reasoned, and I agree completely with it. And then would like to point out that it is not just Indy that does this....as an example, the infamously stupid 'front three squares' rule for top defense. It makes no sense to have that rule as the 7th ed (as developed so lovingly by MC as you point out) clearly states ANY top attack can be defended, yet the rule exception is there and is apparently not thought to be a perversion of the 7th ed rules. What you are really going to have to address is the plethora of 'house rules' that vary from club to club. Each feels that their rules were enacted for very good reasons. None of them try to force other groups to use their rules. Yet in order to make your point valid you'll need to include MN, AZ, WI, MI, etc in your statement. It's not just Indy. Additionally, a lot of house rules start out as a way of better explaining oddities or outright errors in the game mechanic, not as a way of including historical accuracy. No one group can really be said to be any worse or any more inaccurate than the others if everyone has their own house rules.

I just got back from Origins. I can tell you that the board game world is alive and thriving. Dawn Patrol would be able to make a resurgence if there were some agreement between all the different groups out there to work together. I'd like to think that a group of gamers that like a game could do that and all agree that pushing the game is a valuable goal. The best way to do that is to have a new edition that is pushed at all game conventions and all playing groups agree to use the new ed as written. Until that happens, you'll continue to have different groups writing their own house rules (which are of course CORRECT) and sniping at other groups (which are of course INCORRECT). I'd like to see that sooner than later.

[AP]

Good call Rick, & sorry if I sounded like I was calling out the Indy group - I should have specified 'house rules' in general, as we are just as guilty with our 'tailing rule heresy' up here in MN
DP has a great established player base, and I agree that as soon as the new edition comes out it will be fun to see the community (hopefully) grow! That 8th edition rulebook will hopefully help - and in the meantime I am sure house rules will continue to grow (the door is sitll open so why not, right! ) It's great that M.C. is always open to these new rule ideas & that some get incorporated over the years as well! (which is why we all keep coming up with them, right?)
We're hoping the new website will be a good portal to increase the 'working together' aspect of promoting the game as well, and have some exciting new tools for players on the site that will hopefully make the game even more interesting of a draw for new players.