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AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I just measured one of my AI Thunderbolts, it's 56mm wingspan (including the little nodules on the wing tips). My AI book says a "real" Thunderbolt is 16.06m. 6mm scale is 1/285, so the 6mm scale Thunderbolt should be 16.06*1000/285 = 56.35mm. So FW's AI model for the Thunderbolt is correct to the millimetre.

I've sunken to a new low, rivet counting on an imaginary aircraft

My apologies for doubting you. I'll need to check mine now. I'm sure that the Thunderbolt was a different scale to the Nightwing, Barracuda and Warhound titan I measured, but perhaps they were too small.

davethepak wrote:
I loved AI, and have a ton of models.
They stopped supporting it.

It was rather annoying that all the Epic models disappeared; typically, the day before I decided to order some. Other than that, the rulebook and supplement had all the rules for the available miniatures; it was a complete game.

With hindsight, it would be nice to have the rules for all the flyers released for 40k since sixth edition, but they all appeared after AI was cancelled.

 AndrewGPaul wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I just measured one of my AI Thunderbolts, it's 56mm wingspan (including the little nodules on the wing tips). My AI book says a "real" Thunderbolt is 16.06m. 6mm scale is 1/285, so the 6mm scale Thunderbolt should be 16.06*1000/285 = 56.35mm. So FW's AI model for the Thunderbolt is correct to the millimetre.

I've sunken to a new low, rivet counting on an imaginary aircraft

My apologies for doubting you. I'll need to check mine now. I'm sure that the Thunderbolt was a different scale to the Nightwing, Barracuda and Warhound titan I measured, but perhaps they were too small.

Well now you've got me interested

Nightwing looks to be a bit undersized, my NW are 37mm long and they should be 12m full size which means 42mm in 6mm scale.

Ork Fighta; model is 42mm wingspan, should be 45.6mm at 1/285.

Ork Fighta Bommer; model is 54mm, should be 63mm at 1/285

Ork Bommer; model is 91mm, should be 84mm

Hellblade; model is 54mm, should be 48mm at 1/285

So assuming 1/285 is what they were targeting, the Thunderbolt is spot on, Ork Fighta, Fighta Bommer and Eldar Nightwing are slightly undersized, Hellblade and Bommer are slightly oversized.

It was rather annoying that all the Epic models disappeared; typically, the day before I decided to order some. Other than that, the rulebook and supplement had all the rules for the available miniatures; it was a complete game.

Tell me about it. I was in the middle of collecting AI when it died. When I heard about it I straight away went to the FW store and tried to buy a full Imperial squadron and my CC company blocked the transaction and locked my card. By the time I got it sorted out it was all gone

Few things GW have done over the years have pissed me off more than that. Killing a game without any notification or a decent opportunity to finish off collections before they went down. As much as it pisses me off they killed WHFB, at least I can still buy the models, and they are slowly letting LotR die but with enough opportunity for players to round out their forces.

Let's stick to Aeronaticus Imperialis in this thread, as it's the topic.

New and rumours about other games will have their own threads when there is any information available.

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Tell me about it. I was in the middle of collecting AI when it died. When I heard about it I straight away went to the FW store and tried to buy a full Imperial squadron and my CC company blocked the transaction and locked my card. By the time I got it sorted out it was all gone

Oh god, that day. Thankfully I managed to get most of the AI stuff I wanted except for the Manta, including (probably) the last Lightning fighters FW ever sold (they came back into stock very briefly and immediately went out of stock forever when my order went through). I had to give up on the Tau BFG fleet I was trying to get because of a similar credit card issue. But that was just ridiculous, stuff was going out of stock forever in the few minutes between putting it in your cart and getting through checkout.

 Peregrine wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
Tell me about it. I was in the middle of collecting AI when it died. When I heard about it I straight away went to the FW store and tried to buy a full Imperial squadron and my CC company blocked the transaction and locked my card. By the time I got it sorted out it was all gone

Oh god, that day. Thankfully I managed to get most of the AI stuff I wanted except for the Manta, including (probably) the last Lightning fighters FW ever sold (they came back into stock very briefly and immediately went out of stock forever when my order went through). I had to give up on the Tau BFG fleet I was trying to get because of a similar credit card issue. But that was just ridiculous, stuff was going out of stock forever in the few minutes between putting it in your cart and getting through checkout.

You probably got my Lightnings after my CC company cancelled the payment

In the end all I got was an Ork squadron. I wanted an Imperial squadron more than anything and also wanted a couple of smaller squadrons for Tau and Eldar but didn't get them. Managed to pick up an Eldar squadron 2nd hand for a decent price after the fall though.

What was the main appeal of this game? I missed out on it. Is this the game that the Marauder and all that belongs to, or something else?

Edit: Removed OT comment.

You know, it would be weird if they put out a new Aeronautica Imperialis game and not include the Imperial Navy, seeing as the name of the game is their name, but in High Gothic.

 Stormwall wrote:
What was the main appeal of this game? I missed out on it. Is this the game that the Marauder and all that belongs to, or something else?

Not in any particular order:

- Excellent looking sculpts
- At a scale where you could actually have dogfights
- Could use the planes in Epic as well
- Very tactical in that you had to really plan ahead and second guess the other player (Getting on the tail of another plane gave you a special rule where you could shadow its movement)
- Ammo and fuel were limited meaning that, again, you had to plan and time your attacks
- Not just dogfights, but troop landings and bombing runs were part of the game
- Rules were simple and elegant
- You got to use phrases like "This bogie is all over me!" and "Bandits at 2 o'clock"!

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I guess I'm not really following your logic as to why? Surely the potential to sell stuff just comes down to peoples love of either 6mm sci-fi aircraft or 1/1200 scale fantasy ships?

There's a huge range of potential ships you could have made for Dreadfleet if people were interested in buying them and someone was interested in making them.

It's like the difference between making a game where you can only ever use Knight sized units and normal 40K where you can use Knight sized units. One of those will always sell more.

 Stormwall wrote:
What was the main appeal of this game? I missed out on it. Is this the game that the Marauder and all that belongs to, or something else?

Edit: Removed OT comment.

Well at it's core the main appeal was having aerial dogfights in the 40k universe. Aircraft in regular 28mm games of 40k is kind of stupid, the aircraft are out of scale and the rules have to be wonky to allow them on the table.

AI was a game built around the aircraft, so it let you play them properly.

Beyond that, it had good models, it had good rules which were very simple (most the rules were covered in a handful of pages) yet gave a real tactical depth which meant they took a long time to master and allowed for interesting games (compared to many wargames which just involve moving a bunch of models toward each other, rolling a bunch of dice and removing a bunch of models, AI was a much more nuanced game).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 His Master's Voice wrote:

AllSeeingSkink wrote:
I guess I'm not really following your logic as to why? Surely the potential to sell stuff just comes down to peoples love of either 6mm sci-fi aircraft or 1/1200 scale fantasy ships?

There's a huge range of potential ships you could have made for Dreadfleet if people were interested in buying them and someone was interested in making them.

It's like the difference between making a game where you can only ever use Knight sized units and normal 40K where you can use Knight sized units. One of those will always sell more.

I'm still not really following you, do you mean because DF didn't use an existing scale (where as AI uses the same scale as Epic)?

Because AI is a game "where you can only ever use Knight sized units". You can use aircraft and AA units. That's about it.

If you make a game where you try and mix the rules of Epic and AI, it doesn't really work because they happen on different time scales (1 Epic turn is probably an entire game of AI). You get the same problem 40k has where the aircraft are shoehorned in.

AI is as much of a dead end as Dreadfleet in terms of a game in and of itself, the only expansion it has is that being 6mm the models can be used for Epic, but I think that's of more value if Epic comes out first so people have Epic armies they can expand with flyers rather than the other way around (since flyers are only a very small part of Epic).

I managed to get a couple each of Thunderbolts, Nightwings and Barracudas - just enough to try out the game - and a Marauder and the ground-attack Marauder.

I was toying with getting some Ork fightas and a few AA vehicles and doing a 3D board for Bommerz over da sulphur river (perhaps to run as a public participation game at wargames shows), but nothing ever came of it.

 zedmeister wrote:

 Stormwall wrote:
What was the main appeal of this game? I missed out on it. Is this the game that the Marauder and all that belongs to, or something else?

Not in any particular order:

- Excellent looking sculpts
- At a scale where you could actually have dogfights
- Could use the planes in Epic as well
- Very tactical in that you had to really plan ahead and second guess the other player (Getting on the tail of another plane gave you a special rule where you could shadow its movement)
- Ammo and fuel were limited meaning that, again, you had to plan and time your attacks
- Not just dogfights, but troop landings and bombing runs were part of the game
- Rules were simple and elegant
- You got to use phrases like "This bogie is all over me!" and "Bandits at 2 o'clock"!

Also height/altitude, which is something X-Wing for example lacks.

To be fair, it's set in space so that sort of energy management isn't relevant (and even in-atmosphere, I think Star Wars fighters have so much thrust available that it doesn't matter).

What makes Aeronautica Imperialis a better successor to Wings of War/Glory than X-Wing is the variety of mission types available. Not just dogfights, there's photo-reconnaissance, bombing runs, aerial insertion/extraction and interception missions.

Plus aircraft had ammunition limits. A Thunderbolt had ... six( ?) turns-worth of shots available for its autocannon, but only two for the lascannon, so you had to make your shots count.

TBF there's plenty of scenarios for X Wing, they even include punch out tokens for them in the expansions if necessary, it's just they seldom get played.

There's room in my life for AI and X Wing though, so I'm not really bothered!

I know - I'm just about to start playing through them all with a couple of friends, rather than more boring 100-point dogfights.

And yes, I don't buy into a game because of the rules; I buy in because of the models and the setting, so I'd like loads of X-Wings and loads of Thunderbolts!

When is the next Forgeworld Event?

I guess, when Aeronautica Imperialis truely will come in the first half of 2016, on such a Event they would tell us this.