Bay 12 Games Forum

Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
Advanced search  
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4

Author Topic: B-17 Flying Fortress boardgame: The Detroit Dame  (Read 15573 times)

Seamas

  • Bay Watcher
  • Which way to the Egress?
    • View Profile
Re: B-17 Flying Fortress boardgame: The Detroit Dame
« Reply #15 on: February 01, 2014, 12:55:25 pm »

I'm curious to know if our typical bomb hit % is historically accurate on average or just a skewed result of the dice rolls.  So far the dame is averaging what, maybe 15%?

Does that bomb run % refer to the amount of our ordnance that was physically dropped or that which hit the target?  It would be a shame to land back in England with a bomb bay still full of bombs, but it would also be poor form to drop leftover bombs wherever they fall for convenience's sake...  Sort of a lose-lose there, huh.
Logged
"One should behave like a gentleman when dealing with gentlemen, and a bastard when dealing with bastards."

Anvilfolk

  • Bay Watcher
  • Love! <3
    • View Profile
    • Portuguese blacksmithing forum!
Re: B-17 Flying Fortress boardgame: The Detroit Dame
« Reply #16 on: February 01, 2014, 01:13:04 pm »

I think it's the percentage of the Dame's bombs that actually hit the target. I don't honestly know whether those statistics end up being accurate with respect to the real thing. However, one guy did do a cumulative study of 400 missions (looks like a lot of bombers don't make it past 10-15 missions... that's where the Dame is at right now). The Norden bombsight was supposed to be really good, but between all the flak and wind and speed estimation errors, as far as I know it could miss quite often.

I think at some point it just became a matter of how many bombers flew in each mission. They'd simply saturate the target area, with most missions having between 200 and 500 bombers, I think. There's apparently a nice log of all the operations. According to those logs, things were much quieter than they were in the early war. The Luftwaffe and aviation fuel were both heavily depleted.

You can get a bomb drop malfunction due to damage, and then I think you end up out of formation because you're slower than all the other bombers since you're still carrying bombs on the return trip. That is a very, very dangerous situation to be in! Most often though, you drop the bombs, whether on-target or off-target. You're off-target on a roll of 1-2 and on-target on a 3-6. However, if you were hit by flak you get a -1 to the roll, and if there's damage to critical systems you can have up to a -3 or -4 modifier. If you're off target there's a minimal chance that you'll hit a little bit - maybe 10% chance of 5% or 10% hit accuracy. If you're on target it varies wildly from almost 100% to 20%, I think.

Anyway, flew mission 10 today. Starting on 11 we'll be going on "real" missions, outside the fighter umbrella, maybe even into Germany. I'll try to get the writeup for missions 6-10 sometime tonight, and hopefully get some of the real missions in at some point in the weekend :)
« Last Edit: February 01, 2014, 01:19:25 pm by Anvilfolk »
Logged

EuchreJack

  • Bay Watcher
  • Lord of Norderland - Lv 20 SKOOKUM ROC
    • View Profile
Re: B-17 Flying Fortress boardgame: The Detroit Dame
« Reply #17 on: February 01, 2014, 01:20:41 pm »

It would be a shame to land back in England with a bomb bay still full of bombs, but it would also be poor form to drop leftover bombs wherever they fall for convenience's sake...  Sort of a lose-lose there, huh.

I remember reading somewhere that it was common practice in WWII to drop any leftover bombs prior to landing, but not for convenience sake: It was dangerous to land with a full bomb load.  If the landing gears malfunctioned and you had a belly full of bombs...BOOM!

It also wasn't wherever they may fall: Some air wings had designated areas near the base where they could drop any unused ordinance.  And air missions had secondary targets where they could drop excess bombs if the primary was too heavily defended to get off a whole load.

Anvilfolk

  • Bay Watcher
  • Love! <3
    • View Profile
    • Portuguese blacksmithing forum!
Re: B-17 Flying Fortress boardgame: The Detroit Dame
« Reply #18 on: February 01, 2014, 01:24:36 pm »

Oh, right, missed that part. Absolutely right. You'd never come back home with a full bomb bay if you could avoid it. I assumed they'd drop them over the channel or something. Same thing with carrier airplanes - or perhaps especially with carrier airplanes! You don't want bombs going off when you crash into a carrier....

Interesting that you would mention landing gear malfunction........ stay tuned :P

EuchreJack

  • Bay Watcher
  • Lord of Norderland - Lv 20 SKOOKUM ROC
    • View Profile
Re: B-17 Flying Fortress boardgame: The Detroit Dame
« Reply #19 on: February 01, 2014, 01:32:19 pm »

I forgot to mention that besides the risks of the bombs going off, it was just plain harder to land with the extra weight of the bombs, hence why it was never done.

Yeah, I forgot about the bombs being dropped over the channel.  I seem to recall reading that was fairly common practice if a bomber still had any bombs to drop them over the channel, so good guess!

Anvilfolk

  • Bay Watcher
  • Love! <3
    • View Profile
    • Portuguese blacksmithing forum!
Re: B-17 Flying Fortress boardgame: The Detroit Dame
« Reply #20 on: February 01, 2014, 09:08:41 pm »

Update for missions 6-10 posted!

Now we might be going all the way into Germany - the Mighty 8th is taking the fight to Hitler himself!

EuchreJack

  • Bay Watcher
  • Lord of Norderland - Lv 20 SKOOKUM ROC
    • View Profile
Re: B-17 Flying Fortress boardgame: The Detroit Dame
« Reply #21 on: February 01, 2014, 10:59:15 pm »

Looking forward to further updates.

By the way, how does the rabbit's foot work?  I've seen you've used it a few times to not die.

Anvilfolk

  • Bay Watcher
  • Love! <3
    • View Profile
    • Portuguese blacksmithing forum!
Re: B-17 Flying Fortress boardgame: The Detroit Dame
« Reply #22 on: February 02, 2014, 01:21:39 am »

Used it once :D

Instead of getting an enemy wave, you might get a random event (1/36 chance, I think). And then, in the middle of all possible events (some good, some bad), the most probably one (7 on a 2d6) is the rabbit's foot. You can keep it from mission to mission. You can use it once to re-roll any die roll.

I'd gotten hit by a 109 shell in the bomb bay, then in particular it damaged the bombs themselves, and finally, the bombs were supposed to blow. But I re-rolled that, and they didn't roll. If they had, it would've been instant death, KIA. It was incredibly lucky that I had a rabbit's foot and that the re-roll saved the bombs :)

I'm being absurdly lucky with the damage rolls. I mean, the highest probability of damage to sections is going to be "superficial damage", which has no impact on the mission, but I've been damaged so often and not really gotten anything bad happen. There was the landing gear, a couple of oxygen hits (they needed 2 hits to lose the oxygen). There was that one time I had to drop out of formation because of the heatsuits... But overall, for 10 missions that's not bad at all!

Sheb

  • Bay Watcher
  • You Are An Avatar
    • View Profile
Re: B-17 Flying Fortress boardgame: The Detroit Dame
« Reply #23 on: February 02, 2014, 02:30:43 pm »

It's really getting tense. Especially since you had such a good run so far.
Logged

Quote from: Paul-Henry Spaak
Europe consists only of small countries, some of which know it and some of which don’t yet.

Seamas

  • Bay Watcher
  • Which way to the Egress?
    • View Profile
Re: B-17 Flying Fortress boardgame: The Detroit Dame
« Reply #24 on: February 04, 2014, 02:16:19 am »

Man, it's getting very tense!  I can't believe how lucky this crew and the Dame have been so far.  You must have a whole crate of rabbits tucked away in the cockpit.

So how far apart are these missions - a day, a week?  That's pretty amazing to think the ground crew could fix 'er up so fast, and moreover, leave so little time to the flight crew to recover before sending them out again. 
Logged
"One should behave like a gentleman when dealing with gentlemen, and a bastard when dealing with bastards."

Anvilfolk

  • Bay Watcher
  • Love! <3
    • View Profile
    • Portuguese blacksmithing forum!
Re: B-17 Flying Fortress boardgame: The Detroit Dame
« Reply #25 on: February 04, 2014, 02:45:10 pm »

We've secretly substituted a couple of 200lb bombs for crates of rabbits' feet :D Good thing we've got a big rabbit farm going at base, or we'd never be able to get as many rabbits' feet as we need :D

I still can't believe how insanely lucky the Dame is. Did a couple more missions, one of them to Paris, which is outside the fighter screen. Got hilariously unlucky with the amounts of enemies that showed up, but hilariously lucky with actual damage, as usual. More on that later :)

If you guys are into this, you should try it. The manual for the game is on BoardGameGeek, and there's a VASSAL module for it. That's what I'm doing! It's really, really great to experience playing the game, even though there's not that many choices. There's so much hanging on every single die roll, and you get really attached, and really feel like a part of the experience. The long missions feel really long (IS IT EVER GOING TO END?! LEAVE ME ALONE, FRITZ!! I JUST WANT TO GET HOOOOMMEEEEEE!), the short missions feel really nice, frustration and elation at hit or missed bomb runs...

So how far apart are these missions - a day, a week?  That's pretty amazing to think the ground crew could fix 'er up so fast, and moreover, leave so little time to the flight crew to recover before sending them out again. 

Excellent question! I'm actually guesstimating, since I actually know relatively little about the topic. I prefer the Pacific Theatre and read a lot about the Battle of Britain, which was before the USA came in :) I've been trying to include mission charts, which have dates, but have probably missed quite a few.

Whenever damage is really slight, I fly the next day. If damage is more significant, two or three days later. A lot of the damage is superficial, which I take to mean basically a hole through a steel plate, which is pretty easily fixable. I'm assuming spare parts were always available, and that the ground crew works overnight ;) There's a war going on!

The real reason I'm rushing it a bit more is because I started in '45, and don't want the war to end before the Dame's had the chance to do her 25 missions and its crew go home as heroes! You can get an estimate of mission dates from the mission records of the Memphis Belle, though :) Missions were flown almost every day in real life too, so I just include the Dame whenever I get the chance :D

Knave

  • Bay Watcher
    • View Profile
Re: B-17 Flying Fortress boardgame: The Detroit Dame
« Reply #26 on: February 04, 2014, 03:25:26 pm »

I really enjoy the B-17 game. Enjoying reading along.

I might do a similar LP with a similar game that I just picked up:

The Hunters: German U Boats at War

Basically same premise as B-17, except you command a German U-Boat and have to sink enemy ships and survive being sunk yourself. Haven't played yet, but from what I read there's a little more player input than B-17.
Logged

Anvilfolk

  • Bay Watcher
  • Love! <3
    • View Profile
    • Portuguese blacksmithing forum!
Re: B-17 Flying Fortress boardgame: The Detroit Dame
« Reply #27 on: February 04, 2014, 03:32:12 pm »

Yeah, I've been looking at that one! I keep hearing wonders about it. I'm getting pretty excited with all the solitaire games. I'm thinking I might dive into Carrier next, though that appears to be more of a beast of a game! It's hard to find, and copies are very expensive, but there's a VASSAL module.....

Where did you get Hunters from? I'm not sure whether to get it as a P500 game, since so many things seem to be changing still. It's nice that all the materials are freely available for you to update your copy, though.

I'm also toying with the idea of making a travel version of B-17! I can see myself doing transatlantic flights pretending I'm in a B-17 instead of a 757 :D Let's see how that goes :)

Anvilfolk

  • Bay Watcher
  • Love! <3
    • View Profile
    • Portuguese blacksmithing forum!
Re: B-17 Flying Fortress boardgame: The Detroit Dame
« Reply #28 on: February 06, 2014, 09:43:09 pm »

Flew another mission today, and that's all my heart can take.

The Dame is alternatively amazingly unlucky and amazingly lucky, but I am happy to report that she is somehow still flying at mission 14. I am sad to say that might not be the case for all of her crew...

Stay tuned! I'll hopefully be able to do the writeup this weekend.

Anvilfolk

  • Bay Watcher
  • Love! <3
    • View Profile
    • Portuguese blacksmithing forum!
Re: B-17 Flying Fortress boardgame: The Detroit Dame
« Reply #29 on: February 09, 2014, 01:24:17 am »

Spoiler: Missions 11-13 (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Mission 14 (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Mission 15 (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: Mission 16 (click to show/hide)
« Last Edit: February 18, 2014, 11:24:57 pm by Anvilfolk »
Logged
Pages: 1 [2] 3 4