Pilot Progression

[Garrie]

Have been having a think about a campaign progression system. Ace status is straight forward – 5 confirmed kills (extra card at 15?).

For each of your own planes shot down – roll dice = to pilot skill. Critical hit – bailed out back next game. Hit – bailed out miss one game. No hits – MIA/dead.
For replacements – roll dice =to number of remaining planes. Critical hit – replacement pilot skill 3, hit – replacement pilot skill 2, no hit – no replacement, roll again at the end of next game.
Rank may be good to include for ‘flavour’ but has no game consequence. If a ‘ranked’ pilot is lost Roll dice = to number of surviving pilots. Any hit indicates internal promotions. Otherwise rank is help by the replacement.
The one I’m less sure about is increase in pilot skill (to a max of 5). I’m torn between a fixed number of missions or rolling over pilot skill every 2 or 3 missions. An Ace who rolls over their pilot skill of 5 gains an additional dice to one of their plane’s abilities.

What do you think?

[Koin-Koin]

I like it pretty much.
About the pilot’s skill progression I’d like to have the level 5 matching the 5 kills.
But as we’re going from 2 to 5, maybe
Kills level:
0 2
1-2. 3
3-4. 4
5. 5

[Garrie]

I did start off along those lines but there’s a risk you get a lot of level 5 aces quite quickly making the squadron quite generic. I then went from the position that while skilled pilot = high kill rate,a high kill rate does not necessarily mean a skilled pilot. This means you can have an ace with a low skill level but I thought it was a reasonable trade off to create ‘individual personas’ for the pilots in a narrative campaign.

A couple of other ideas are – penalties and bonuses to dice pools based on theatre/doctrine.

Confirmed kills – only confirmed kills count towards ace points. Where more than pilot causes a boom chit on a shot down plane all claim the kill. The last person to hit it rolls dice equal to pilot skill – if a hit comes up the kill goes to them. If not the next pilot rolls until a hit is scored. If, once all who could claim the kill have rolled, no hits have been rolled then the kill is not awarded to anyone.

This will all require a bit of play testing I think!

[Garrie]

Thanks – I did start off along those lines but there’s a risk you get a lot of level 5 aces quite quickly making the squadron quite generic. I then went from the position that while skilled pilot = high kill rate,a high kill rate does not necessarily mean a skilled pilot. This means you can have an ace with a low skill level but I thought it was a reasonable trade off to create ‘individual personas’ for the pilots in a narrative campaign.

A couple of other ideas are – penalties and bonuses to dice pools based on theatre/doctrine.

Confirmed kills – only confirmed kills count towards ace points. Where more than pilot causes a boom chit on a shot down plane all claim the kill. The last person to hit it rolls dice equal to pilot skill – if a hit comes up the kill goes to them. If not the next pilot rolls until a hit is scored. If, once all who could claim the kill have rolled, no hits have been rolled then the kill is not awarded to anyone.

This will all require a bit of play testing I think!

[Koin-Koin]

I agree. There should be some “counter measure” to avoid a quick full ace squadron.
Anyway, as you said, anything should be tested first to see how it turns.

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