Lol...

You are wasting your time Recon they are not interested in an honest discussion, thus the exaggeration and soon to come insults.

JD
AKA_MattE

LMAO I fly both sides the spit 2 was just easy... you couldn't stall that thing even if you wanted to.

Now see that wasn’t hard, no wild exaggeration (a very mild one) to prove the point. No use of the word UFO, no comparing the Spit II to a Tie fighter or insult needed.

What I find interesting is that none of the 109 jocks have commented on the handling characteristics of the 109, IMO a lot of the problem is there or maybe I am seeing things..

JD
AKA_MattE

First off, I'm not biased towards red or blue. But I think if anyone takes the effort to give it a go on both sides with the intention of living - taking off from a further airfield - climbing in the opposite direction of the action to start off with altitude, etc. I honestly feel both sides are fairly even without the spitII. The 109 will retain it's energy better and climb better, but in doing so it loses the turning contest. If you bounce a 109 without energy in either a spitIa or Rotol Hurri, that 109 is toast or better wording "should be toast". There is absolutely nothing he can do to get away. On the other end of the spectrum, you bounce a slow spit1a or hurri in a 109, they can at least be on the defensive to avoid being shot at, by turning. They may be BnZ'd for 20 minutes straight, but you can at least play the role of avoidance (in a 1v1).

After flying both sides for quite some time in the stupidest of situations to try to get a grasp on the strengths and weaknesses of all the fighters, the spitIIa does virtually everything better than a 109 currently. And as said already, a slow 109 is dead meat already to a spit1a or rotol. I honestly think it's a pretty good match up atm, albeit, the 109 does have the advantage, but that's what team work is for. Get on TS, pair up with a wingman or 3, and you'd be surprised what you can do in virtually any plane in the game.

Until the FM's are corrected, I don't think putting the spitIIa is really the right choice. I do agree the 109 has the advantage, but the room for error is far greater on the red side. The 109 makes one mess up, and well, he's a dead duck. I think you were frustrated Recon, and rightly so :) But I hope you see where I'm coming from. The spitIIa is just far too superior to even think about going against. We want to encourage actual fighting, at least that's what I like, I always hated chasing 109's all day long in Mk9's as they sat in the ionosphere. And in the current situation, there's definitely plenty of fighting go on, and plenty of killing for both sides :D

Sorry Cheese, this isnt accurate mate. In a Boom and Zoom situation, or any kind of climb, the performance of the Hurri isnt even close to the 109. (and the Spit1 isnt even worth discussing). Maybe in a straight line the hurri can almost keep up, but you start them together and make the conflict vertical, then the 109 will eat the hurri for lunch. The 109 can outlimb the hurri by a factor of almost 2 on every leg!

I'd be keen to put the Spit2 against a 109 in a side by side race actually as I personally dont have any experience as to how overmodeled everyone says it is. Although again I come back to the historical data - isnt the Spit2 supposed to be faster????

I think the 109 drivers are just worried about loosing the advantage. ;) I dont see how four Spit2's located at an inland airfield can be so scary for you? As you all keep telling us, if you have the height advantage, and work together you can easily prevail. I think you will just need to adapt your tactics.

Or better yet, come fly the spit1 for a week on the server, with good pilots like MoGas and MrX in 109's, then tell me you dont think there is a massive advantage to the 109 pilots. ;)

Hey Bliss, cheers for the input mate. I'm starting to suspect that my piloting may be at fault here! :-P

There is one situation though where the frustration is really tough to take. That is when you go up against a really good pilot in a 109. These guys wont be drawn into turning fights. They often follow the bombers and they run at the first sign of loosing the advantage. As a Hurri driver it's so frustrating to spend ages chasing a group of bombers up high, only to be bounced by a 109 who then runs away should he make a mistake. Or even should the 109 spot you from a long way out, he just climbs away in a never-ending spiral where your only option is to break out (giving him the advantage). If he doesnt make a mistake, in a hurri you will die. Everytime.

So yeah, I do need to learn better evasion. We do need to fly with wingmen more. We do need to only engage from height. But at the end of the day, we can do all that right, but against guys like Mogas, 9 out of 10 times the guy in the hurri will die. The 109 drivers have no such limitations and no such frustrations.

I dont believe the Spit2 is so much better in the above situations, I think it just levels the playing field. I do though agree that its tough on the less able 109 drivers. So that's why i propose the very limited numbers of spit2s. I know you tried this before, what was the problem? Were they clocking up 30+ kills each? As you know thats what some 109'ers are doing, so if the spit2s arent, then maybe the comparrison isnt that bad in reality?

EDIT: on the plus side, I am becomming a better pilot through all of this this, plus it definately engenders much highler levels of teamwork! Maybe the next Patch will give us the Spit2b! complete with cannons! :-)

Can you provide this data? The best sea level data I can find for a 109 E(3) is 500kph, but I could have sworn I have seen faster numbers somewhere.

JD
AKA_MattE

My first attempt at online play!
 

Hi guys

Well, I just had my first attempt at online play, what fun!

Had absolutely no idea what I was doing :grin: Tried joining the teamspeak server and got on it but had no idea how it all works so eventually just decided to start the game without it. I'll have to figure that out eventually. ;)

Picked a Spit 1 and took off. Flew about my airfield for a while gaining altitude and then figured I may as well set off for France on my lonesome.

I couldn't see anyone for ages so was having a leisurely flight when at last I saw some dots back over the channel. When I reached them they turned out to be a group of dauntlesses (I think) but there was another dot flying above them. I went up to have a closer look wondering if it was another human escorting them or a human 109 having a go at them. I saw it was another Spitfire so I was going to try to form up with him but he zoomed off and I lost him. :oops:

I then flew around the dauntlesses for a bit but got bored so headed back towards France again. Eventually there was a message that a 109 had appeared somewhere in M12. I looked at the map and then at the landscape below me and realized i was quite near there, so I started frantically looking about to see If I could find him. I was flying above an airfield when some flak started going off, and i thought, "Nah, I'll be right, they wont hit me" ... then I heard a bang and a message appeared telling me I had some hydraulic failure. I saw another puff of smoke and looked to my right and behind and lo and behold there was a yellow nose closing on me from that direction! I dont know if it was flak that initially got me and warned me of his presence or whether he had actually been the one to get a hit on me.

My pulse rate increased dramatically and I had a massive smile on my face as i realized that after approximately 30 minutes of thinking nothing was happening, i was now in some serious trouble! :grin::grin:

I tried to turn into him and he must have tried to turn too hard as his plane seemed to flip and then drop. I was able to turn onto him and then make a deflection shot streaming bullets ahead of him and he flew straight through the stream...smoke started to billow out of his machine...I whooped for joy... crikey, I might get my first online kill in my first online dogfight!!

Then another flak explosion and everything started to go red...i was obviously wounded and my left wing had lost its tip and there was a bloody great big hole in it. Somehow the 109 appeared in front of me again and so I had the choice, head for home or try to finish him off whilst injured and with a broken plane! ... Stuff it, If I can get him now, I'll probably get a VC ;) .... fired off another steam of bullets at it, but I don't think I hit him this time.

My plane started making some awful noises and my windscreen became covered in oil, so I figured I had better try to get home. In single player I wouldn't have cared, but for some reason, flying against a human opponent, I wanted to try to survive the mission even if i missed the final kill.

I headed for home, hoping to at least make it back to the English side of the channel. Thankfully, the 109 pilot did not chase me. I got within sight of England with the engine getting worse all the time, and with the red hue of my vision getting darker by the minute.

I eventually successfully ditched in the channel.

Apologies for the long post which really is about nothing, but blimey, even though most of the session was simply looking about wondering where everyone else was, that wasn't half fun when it all kicked off! (That 30 seconds or so was awesome!) Just wanted to share it all with someone :grin:

If any of this rings a bell with a 109 pilot, I'd love to know if it was you that shot me initially or whether it was the flak!

Thanks for the server guys, it ran as smoothly for me as single payer does despite the ping of over 200 given I am in Australia. Great fun.

EDIT: Dauntlesses = Wellingtons :oops:

/..and that's the difference between offline and online play. The other guy is real (usually) and its a test of human skills, often with a bit of luck thrown in !

Offline can be interesting but I find it a bit sterile.

Welcome to on-line play :)