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Old 04-24-2014, 08:52 AM
welsh welsh is offline
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This topic reminds me of that old mercenary flick, the Wild Geese, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wild_Geese in which a group of mercenaries try to rescue an African politician and get betrayed by their corporate sponsors. Air assets factor in three different times, and it works fairly well for an adventure story.

(1) the tech of the company?
Initially the mercenaries parachute in to conduct their mission. The plane later lands to pick them up, turns around and flies off, leaving the mercenaries stranded. The airplane is a military type cargo plane that can land on a rough airfield, designed for developing countries, and a rear ramp that allows for significant cargo haulage. This strikes me as a practical choice for Morrow. The plane is also a prop aircraft, thus reducing the need for complex jet engine repair, it strikes me as a rough plane capable of simple repairs, dependent on generally available fuel sources. One could arm this aircraft with a mini gun or other weapons, turning into something like an AC-130.

(2) Coercive capacity-
The second time is when the mercenaries get napalmed on a bridge, splitting the group up, wiping out a bunch of the small team, and causing lots of problems. The plane a duel use aircraft armed with machine guns and bombing capacity, I recall duel prop and something you'd see on private airfields all over the US. The bomb strikes me as a fairly simple device. Again, this is a good model for the Morrow project and also reflects the damage that can be done to both members and adversaries by fairly non-advanced technologies that "fit" the story. It also reflects an issue of figuring air assets into the balance of the game. Even if Morrow has pretty good aircraft, there needs to be reasonable constraints on the types of planes it uses- duel use makes sense.

But it also means that adversary air groups need to utilize a tech that reflects, realistically, their capacity. In a world of ballooners seeking to escape the chaos of ground, the indigenous air assets need to have some kind of organic fuel capacity, and the aircraft have to reflect local level of tech. Even if VTOL planes make sense, the technology might be out of reach for maintenance. But this makes airfields an important element of the story as well.

(3) Indigenous capacity and infrastructure-
The third point in the film involves the mercenaries escape- where they find a local priest who is also a bush pilot, knows where there is an old Douglas Dakota cargo plane and offers to spirit them out of the country. The Dakota is an old mid 20th century relic, is in bad shape, and gets shot up and barely makes it out of the country. This too, represents to me a decent example of a reasonable local plane. If we are going to find local air assets that work, it will look something like that Dakota, essentially an airplane running on worn out toothpicks and rubber bands.

If these planes lasted 150s, not only do they have to rely on maintained parts, but also serious training of technical support and personnel to keep the planes airborne. This might mean a small group of dedicated pilots and aircrews who maintain planes either as a collective effort or in isolated groups. Remember, there isn't much population and most people are worried about subsistence- the US has become 1980s Africa in terms of development and infrastructure.

Of course, its your game so do what you want. My only advice here is to be careful with the integration of technology. "Cool" tech can cause more problems than it is worth, while desperation (through material and technical scarcity) might be the mother of innovation. As director of your story, you need to maintain the vitality of your story going forward. If your idea is a modern air war between say the Kentucky Free State and Morrow, ok. Then you have to think about the balance or if it becomes a chain of swatting KFS pilots out of the sky, the game will get boring. But if the problem is, say, acquiring a vaccine (hidden in an ancient lab in Canada) to an outbreak of a lethal form of small pox that is breaking out in an Indian community in New Mexico, than figuring out how to use scarce air assets might be fun.

Last edited by welsh; 04-24-2014 at 09:01 AM.
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