I'm a big WWII aviation buff, and the original draw of 40k for me was seeing some guy with a scratch-built Ork Fighta-Bommer at my FLGS years ago. The atmospheric craft of the Imperium and the other forces really intrigue me. I've written up a trio of Specialties and a rather large number of planes, with references for those already published and notes on what I need to work on in the future. Enjoy, and PEACH!

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1BOOp5mKqKIURsycaid8EJszqwnBDtvYSKrj1RHSxTtk

Well the biggest biggest problem seems to be the lack of arial combat rules (at least for OW).
There should be a critical hit table for aircraft since the one for tanks can hardly apply here.

Are you sure about the range of 100km for ground attack weaponry? That seems…weird. I'm assuming there's modern weapon you're basing this on but I'm not sure if precision rockets are really the Imperiums thing.

Besides that some fluff and GM insipiration would be nice. Like how the Players should be integrated into the Navy and how relevant NPC Vehicles are and how the GM might treat those. From a mechanical standpoint the write up looks solid but you should add "terrain". I.e. how clouds and similar stuff can affect sight and similar stuff.

You also just hand the 3 specializations various Comrade advances without explaining how they work in the air. For example Set-up Shot and Protector would need at least some rewording for arial combat.

 I typed up the Aerial Combat rules, but that's from a Rogue Trader book and I thought it might be a bad idea to re-print those without consent.

Everything else you said sounds pretty solid. Aerial terrain could be fun. Writing up a few mission ideas would be a blast.

Nice idea though. I think that Vulture Gunship could be a nice addition to Vehicles Section of the book. Why? It would be natural that Imperial Guard relies on heavy airsupport in their land battles… same as modern troops rely on use of Apaches or Hinds or whatever else. Also if Imperial guard is fighting to control some important infrastructure on infested world such is Prometheium Rafinery or Chaos captured Manufactorum producing Warlord Titans (strategic value absolute LOL) they should rely on something more surgical then orbital bombardment or Marauder strafe run which could inflict unnecessary collateral damage to the objective installations.

Despite that it is common practice that Drop Regiments use active Vulture support during their combat drops since they lack artillery.

I feel like this needs its own talents. Ideas?

Plushy said:

Maybe a Talent that allows you to attack an enemy (or gain a bonus) if they recently attacked an ally. This could allow the Ace to come to the rescue of maybe the Support player like a wing of fighters that escort a few bombers.

One could also add a talent (or rewrite that as a skill usage) to allow one to make a Stealth / Operate(Flyer) check when flying at low altitude to hide (from Radar?)

How about something similar to counter attack that allows a pilot to fire turret based weaponry on an attacking craft as a reaction (or when a certain trigger situation like the attacking craft missing occurs).

Maybe there should be a new talent group similar to enemy but not as extreme. Like Nemesis / Rivalry (Some other Squadron).

What you might actually need more than talents is aircraft traits, the ones in OW are mostly for ground vehicle so writing some new ones would be usefull.

Looks good. I had a similar idea, so I’m also doing some work on a “Navy Supplement”, tentatively called either “Aces & Eagles” or “Aces & Aquila’s”. It is still in an early stage, but I feel the base flying rules are too limited for a game focusing on aircraft e.g. I am borrowing the principles on “Thrust”, “Altitude” “Speed” from Tactica Aeronautica and want to add some extra maneuvers. My draft intro is done:

• Presented here before you is Aces & Eagles, a completely unofficial web-enhancement for Fantasy Flight Games’ Only War Warhammer 40K Roleplaying Game. Aces & Eagles expands Only War to support Navy Fighter & Bomber crew members, in addition to the Imperial Guard soldiers already covered in Only War.

• Aces & Eagles is not a stand-alone game, and refers back to Only War for any basic rules, character creation, etc. The structure of this enhancement follows that of the Only War core book. Chapter I covers Fighter Wings, the Navy equivalent of Imperial Guard Regiments. Chapter II covers Character creation of Navy characters, including new specialties such as the Fighter Pilot, Gunner or Navigator. Chapter III covers some new uses of skills, whereas Chapter IV describes new talents relevant to Navy characters. Chapter V describes Navy gear, including personal gear, crew side-arms, but most importantly the Fighters and Bombers of the Imperial Navy. Chapter VI expands the rules of vehicle combat to Aerial combat, and includes an extended system of handling such combats on a battle mat. Chapter VII provides advice to gamemasters on running a Navy campaign, including some ideas for adventures, challenges and more, whereas Chapter VIII provides the statistics of different enemies of the Empire for the heroes to fight, from Xenos pilots to aircraft and anti-air defenses.

I personally don't think flyers need any concrete rules in OW. Air support should work as artillery support does: narratively. I don't think a game in which every character is a Navy pilot would work, either. Either they all go inside a Marauder Bomber or other large craft, or there's essemtially only two or three classes that are actually viable (a Psyker or a Comissar make little sense inside a plane), and there's a lot less they can do that people on foot can. And if only one player mans the craft, with his comrade in the gunner seat I assume, as he would regular support vehicles like Leman Russ', he'd be so removed from the rest of the party as to almost not be considered part of it and would regularly have to dissapear for several hours to rearm and refuel.

I think it should really be a separate game/setting with either players all playing a member of a Bomber Crew, or all playing e.g. a pilot as part of a Flight of Fighters.

I agree it would be quite a niche game.

Perhaps it could include some options for “troupe” play with players playing e.g. A valkyrie piloit, gunners, and escort plane pilots during one part of an adventure and a group of Elysian drop troopers the next part (e.g. they all play two characters). These kind of advices and ideas would be interesting (I think)
 

Musclewizard said:

It's not one for tanks either.  It's for a generic 'vehicle'.  As discussed in the on Vehicles thread, there's quite a few crits that really don't apply to tanks any more then they would aircraft…