I don't remember Mr.Yakovlev or his colleagues ever mentioned anything about their attempts to make Yaks more "FW-ish". I might be wrong, of course.
I do remember however, that Yakovlev was somewhat obcessed with competition against Willy Messerschmitt.

Back to the topic.
My opinion from the other side.
I flew Yaks just few times in early IL2 years, but 190A/F in all stock versions was one of my favourites until I quitted the game in 2009.
I don't recall considering Yak-3 as real threat, unless I was in 109F with full bombload. Or found myself at low alt with low energy or damaged. Once you learned how to fight against La and Spit, you just stopped bothering about Yaks, except that "very late war" VK107A version.
But as said, it was until 2009. No idea how FM of 109A has changed since then.

Didn't the unresolved problem of the ply wood coming off at high speed stop it from being a " truly excellent plane".

;)

Was it really an unresolved problem? I got the impression that the Soviet way was to rush badly needed planes out and iron out the kinks in later production batches. So the first few hundred planes would have problems like the one you mentioned, then the next few hundred would have them improved, then the next few hundred would be perfected, then the next major model of the plane would appear and the cycle would be repeated.

Exactly. Poor quality management was intrinsic problem (or feature) of all Soviet industries, aircraft manufacturing including. War years added new challenges as drain of qualified labor force and extremely high pressure of party leadership.

though they were not alone, the American built Hispanos speak for themselves, as does the British Typhoon. And while the early war planes of the Japanese and German/Italian may have been up to specs, they soon could not afford the time to produce quality products, see engine problems both on He177 and Ki-84.
And I''m sure those are only a few examples of many. And we should not forget that the Russians had neither the time nor the labour nor the resources to afford quality products early on - and the heavy influence of politics on production did not help IMHO.

Early to mid-war Soviet, and late war Japanese and German aircraft should be far less reliable than they are currently. Ditto for some US-built aircraft (e.g., the Brewster B-239, B-339, B-29), and some UK and Soviet aircraft.

Of course, introducing any sort of unreliability or performance reduction into the the game might be self-defeating. For campaign or stand-alone missions, most players will just hit "quit" and refly the mission if they experience an equipment failure. It might be better to factor in unreliability into number of planes flyable for a particular squadron in a campaign.

Totally in agreement.

Well, the He-177 actually got MORE reliable over time :D DB606 engine (He-177A1, first 15 A3) was a disaster, but DB610 was much better. It wasnt exceptionally reliable, true, but all major problems of the DB606 were fixed. It was still much more reliable than for example the soviet VK107.

Ed, the only advice that counts is that which is about flying against smart pilots.

A smart FW190 pilot is going to keep his bird going as fast as it can without overheating at all times, and he is also going to keep it around 3000 meters altitude or higher. The smartest FW190 pilots do the above plus have a wingman!

The FW190 has a great horizontal stabilizer, so if one of them comes after you that is going maximum speed and all you try to do to evade is a spiral climb it makes sense that he will be able to hit you as all he has to do is use his speed and his aircraft's great high-speed control to move you into his sights and fire his six guns.

The reason the smart FW190 pilot will keep his bird around 3000 meters altitude is so he can break-off the fight at will. At any time the FW190 can dive away at a speed that will make the Yak or other Russian planes breakup if it tries to match in pursuit. Then the FW can either go home, or turn back at you for another shot after you break off.

The only time you are going to get a shot at a smart FW190 pilot is if you have the element of surprise that flying hard settings can give you, or if you catch them while they are climbing to altitude. Other than that the only FW190 pilot you will shoot down will be the greedy or dumb ones who slow their bird down and try fighting with it at low speed and low altitude. .

In the end "dogfighting" at slow speeds is a child's game for fun. You are not going to dogfight at slow speeds vs. more than one opponent and not get shot down unless they are very poor pilots. Smart pilots in WWII and in IL2 who want to score and get back home to land were and are the winners, and they will fly straight and fast, take a few good shots or drop a bomb and fly back home. If they slow down to "dogfight" where there are multiple enemy aircraft then they will not be going home, not in history and not in IL2.