Looking for assistance on ranking of WW2 warplanes

Hey folks,

I’m working on research for a trading card game that I’m designing and I’m hoping to be able to use your WW2 knowledge to help make it “right”.

The game (Reclaim Earth) takes place in the not too distant future, in a setting where the Earth has suffered a catastrophic event that has set it back to square one. Governments, structure, technology advancements and such are all dismantled. It’s Earth reborn basically in an altered state.

Game play will focus on players battling for and taking ownership of each territory, reclaiming the land.

One of the main driving forces of the game concept is that players will rediscover old technology and use that technology to build up their military power. The technology that they will find, in this phase of the game, will be WW2 era planes, ships and tanks.

This game has been in the works (scribbling notes on a pad) for quite awhile. The proper usage, and getting things right, of WW2 units is very important to the game and what I hope the game achieves in regards to enjoyment and authenticity. Before starting this project my knowledge of this area was low. But as I’ve researched the topics, I find it very interesting and I’m glad this project has brought me down that road.

I’m planning on using 150 ww2 military units. 50 planes. 50 ships. 50 tanks. I’ve decided to use units from 5 nations; USA, Germany, Soviet Union, Japan, and United Kingdom.

So… each nation will have a set of 30 units. (10 air, 10 sea, 10 land).

I’ve also drilled down further to have different unit types. And those types will have their own attack properties.

So, in essence, I’m looking for help with 2 main things. 1. The categorizing and inclusion of 50 planes and 2. a general ranking of those planes. I could go the easy route and piggy back existing games out there but going to the source would be more accurate / satisfying.

I’ll list the warplanes (50) that I’m planning on using as of now (but certainly have flexibility) and the family of unit type they fit into. When looking over the planes that were included think of what you’d want to see in a game, meaning… there may be more powerful rarer units than those listed but I wanted to include units based on importance, popularity, production numbers, relevance, etc. And I didn’t want to get into different variations per each unit type.





In this space used to be some really nice charts. Formatting went to hell when I copied it over. I'll work on that.




When I was planning on the planes to use, as mentioned, I wanted to use 10 from each nationality and to end up with sets of 5, 10, or 15 of each unit type to give all air units an organized structure. So that lead to some decisions, some planes got cut out in order to achieve that. But with that said… is there any gross omissions? Are there planes that are in the wrong category? Are there planes that should be replaced by another? This may look like a simple chart to those that are knowledgable in this area but it took a fair bit of research to get here seeing as I started from scratch. For me to just move forward as is, without getting validation from those in the know, would be doing the game and WW2 enthusiasts an injustice. So I kindly ask for your assistance here.

Probably most important is my second ask. How does each plane stack up against their peers? For values I will be using 3 properties. 1. Attack speed. 2. Damage power / range. 3. Life / Durability.



Also, each plane will have a general overall score. Although this overall score won’t be displayed to the player it will assist me with checking the overall effectiveness of the unit and making sure it resembles the rankings that I’m able to put together from research and hopefully this thread, and others like it. Any info that you want to share about speed or power or durability is great. But having someone go into all that is too much to ask. Even if you can give a general ranking of each unit that would be incredibly helpful. I have already ranked them but I don’t trust it.

Along with your own rankings, also helpful would be any links or resources that you think could help. I’ll add a list below to copy and paste to make giving feedback easier, along with the rank (1-10) that I had used up to this point and for testing purposes, knowing that some of them are way off. Another thing that I had to take into consideration when ranking was that there had to be a certain amount of 10’s, 9’s, etc in the full 150 card set, so that influenced some rankings.




Dog Fighters
P51 Mustang 10
Supermarine Spitfire 10
Bf109 10
Fw 190 9
Yak 9 9
P40 Warhawk 8
Yak 7 7
Hawker Hurricane 7
Ki 43 (Oscar) 6
Mig 3 5
Ki 61 (Tony) 4
Me 262 3?
Ki 84 (Frank) 3
Yak 3 2
Yak 1 1

Carrier Fighters
F4U Corsair 9
A6M Zero (Zeke) 8
Submarine Seafire 7
F6F Hellcat 5
Martlet (F4F) 5

Dive Bombers
SB2C Helldiver 9
SDB Dauntless 5
Ju 87 (Stuka) 8
Su 2 3
Il 2 1
D4Y (Judy) 6
Ki 51 (Sonia) 4
B5N (Kate) 2
D3A (Val) 1
Fairey Barracuda 6

Heavy Fighter / Medium Bomber
P47 Thunderbolt 10
P38 Lightning 7
Ju 88 7
He 111 5
Bf 110 3
Me 410 2
Do 17 1
Tu 2 6
Tupolev SB 3
Pe 2 1
Ki 21 (Sally) 6
G4M (Betty) 4
Mosquito 8
Vickers Wellington 4
Bristol Beaufighter 2


Heavy Bomber
B-29 Superfortress 10
B-24 Liberator 8
He 177 2
Avro Lancaster 9
Handley Page Halifax 4




So that’s it. Hopefully I haven’t scared too many off with the super long post. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated. This isn’t an established gaming company working on their next project. We’re just a couple of guys wanting to bring this game concept to life. Dependant on success, we have a few things planned for the future for this concept, but it starts with a card / board game. Its in play testing now. It’s very enjoyable. But we’re working on getting things right. Mechanics, unit strengths. It all has to be “right”.

So, what do you get out of it? Not much unfortunately. But if this game ever lands on your shelf, or anyone else’s, wouldn’t it be nice to know that you’ve contributed to the shaping of the authenticity of the WW2 units. I think that would be pretty neat. Also, I plan to reference any source that assisted in the making of the game. Also, if the board takes an interest in the project I can certainly keep anyone up to date with how things are moving along and in time, a launch date.

Maybe if all goes well, kids will be marvelling over old WW2 plane trading cards like they do with whatever fantasy based creatures they collect these days, taking an interest in the topic like you have.

That too, would be pretty neat.



If you’ve enjoyed reading this post and wish there were 2 more just like it, good news…. I’ve put / am putting separate threads in each of the air, sea, land forums.



Much thanks for taking the time,

Jesse Galloway

 

2 quick questions. Your rankings 1. Attack speed. 2. Damage power / range. 3. Life / Durability.

Will there be separate ratings for damage against air and damage against ground targets?

Also by range I assume you refer to engagement range rather than distance it can travel?

 

Hey Pacifist, thanks for the reply.

That chart that got mangled during the copy / paste process answered your first question. I'll try to get that back in tomorrow. But there are 5 different types of planes. Dog fighters only hit air. Heavy bombers only hit land. etc. So, no... there will not be different attack values per target. They can either hit another unit type or not.

As for damage range, my wording is misleading. Has nothing to do with distance or range. When attacking with a certain unit it can do between this amount and that amount of damage. You'll roll a die to determine attack power.

Attack speed... the game will be a card game, which can be played on a board. I'm using attack speed to determine in what order each unit gets to attack. So attack speed is how quick it is to hit. For planes, attack speed would be a combination of top speed, agility, efficiency.

 

My comments are in RED

 

Takao, that's super helpful bud. Thank you.

Just some feedback on your feedback... Between each group of 50 units. (planes in this instance) I want to end up with 5 "level 10's, 5 level 9s....

So 5 at each rank, so although any of the ones listed as a 10 might not be perfect planes, were they amongst the 5 best overall planes in ww2 in their roles. Not that I'm asking anyone to make a perfect ranking that all works out to that structure. Your feedback was great. A few more (well a few plus a couple) like that and I can rerank them with more confidence.

Regarding categories... dog fighters are attacking air units. Carrier fighters are attacking air and sea. Dive bombers are hitting anything that's down (sea and land). That all makes sense to me. And that's why I have the Kate with the dive bombers, within the game it's all grouped as one, attacking down.

I only want 5 categories. That leaves 2 available. One of which should be bomber. I have it listed as heavy bomber and includes 5 planes.

For the last category, I've grouped both heavy fighter and medium bomber as one. It has 15 planes included. Those 15 planes are able to hit all other units, air, sea and land. Does that not work?

If you say it doesn't, I could make a change. The other way to do it is to shrink the heavy fighter to 10 and expand the bomber to 10, including medium bombers. This may make more sense.

Is P40 in the wrong category?

And I'll check out those other planes you have listed.

Thanks takao. I'm gonna be adding something similar to the tank and ship section. I'm guessing you know a thing or two about Japanese ships.

 

The carrier fighters seam to be rated well below the land based fighters. I don't think that is particularly accurate. Also might want to differintiate between air superiority fighters and anti bomber fighters.

Rating a P-38 and a JU-88 the same looks problematic to me. I don't think I'd seperate out the P-47 and P-38 from the regular fighters certainly wouldn't include them with medium bombers.

I notice you left out the B-17 as well.

 

Any air unit that has a primary function of attacking other air units will be grouped as dogfighter. I'm hoping with enough feedback I can totally reshuffle the units that are included and their rankings.

And yes, I'm sure there's some important planes that I don't have listed. For things to work within the planned structure there can only be 10 USA planes, for an example. So they can't all fit in. But there may be opportunities where certain planes can get dropped and others added.

That's not to say other planes can't be added after the fact but for the initial release, I want things nice and tidy as far as how many of each nationality and plane type.

 

In that case the P-38 and P-47 are defintily dogfighters, but then so are the F4F, F6F, F4U, Zero and other carrier fighters. Note the last two saw extensive use from land bases possibly more than they saw from carriers.

 

Anyone else want to give the re-ranking of the planes a go?

 

The F6F dominated carrier warfare in the Pacific. Even in 1945 when the F4U went aboard the fast carriers, the F6F had a better kill to loss ratio than the F4U (which included some F4U-4's).

The Yak-3 (despite the numbering) was actually a later aircraft than the Yak-9. Smaller and lighter but with the same engine as the -9. Faster and much more capable as a dogfighter. The Yak-9 is rated too high and the -3 too low.

The B-29 was classified as a Very Heavy Bomber and was in a category of its own.

The Bf-109 was not the equal of either the P-51 or the Spitfire.

 

Thanks Mcoffee, very helpful.

Anyone else,,,,?

 

Checking back in... I've been working on something else game'y and haven't looked at this for a few days. I'm gonna go through any info provided for each of the 3 posts and update my lists. I'll repost each and maybe that will fuel another round of discussion. I'll get this done tonight.

 

Ok, that took a bit of digging and massaging, dropped a couple planes (P40, He177, Tu SB2. Sally) and added a couple (B17, Do 217, La-5, George). I reshuffled the messy Heavy Fighter / Medium Bomber category. The medium bombers have been place with heavy bombers. It makes sense as they do the same basic function. Or at least, in the game, they will.

So... I'm gonna do this abit different. I'm just gonna rank each category. Let me know if it looks right.

Dog Fighters (main function is to shoot at things that fly)
P-51
Spitfire
Bf109
Me 262
N1K-J (George)
Fw 190
Yak 3
Ki-84 (Frank)
Yak 9
Ki-43 (Oscar)
La-5
Yak 7
MiG 3
Ki-61 (Tony)
Yak 1

Heavy Fighters (basic function - shoot at everything)
P47
Mosquito
Hurricane
P38
Tu 2
Bf 110
Me 410
Beaufighter
Su 2
Do 217

Carrier Fighters (basic function - shoot at stuff out at sea)
F6F Hellcat
F4U Corsair
Seafire
Zero
F4F Martlet

Dive / Torpedo Bombers (basic function - shoot at stuff under them)
Helldiver
Ju 87
Barracuda
Dauntless
Judy
Il 2
Val
Kate
Pe 2
Sonia

Medium & Heavy Bombers (basic function is to bomb stuff on land)
B29
Lancaster
B24
Page Halifax
B17
Ju 88
Wellington
He 111
Betty
Do 17


What say you?

 

You probably want to be a bit more detailed in the names of the aircraft for a couple of reasons. One it allows a more accurate assesement of its strengths. Two it makes it easy to add different versions later. Take for instance the F4F Martlet (which is technically the RN version of the F4F Wildcat except for that last version of the F4F in British service). See
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grumman_F4F_Wildcat#Royal_Navy_Martlets
For a quick run down in the variants. A big difference between the early Marlets and early Wildcats is the lack of superhcargers in the former.

 

Yeah I had considered that IWD. I can't see me every wanting to add different versions later but it's better to have the option than not. I think I'll get things tightened up as is and might come back to that before I lock things down.

It would make it easier to ask for feedback if I indeed have the model numbers in I suppose but it may lead to information overload too.

I do see your point though.

 

Let me ask this...

What model numbers would you attach to each plane as they are ranked now?

Or what is the most well known model # for each? And does that change their ranking?