Dogfighting -does 4.11-4.12 patch address this?
 

While I'm on the subjsect of aircraft performance...

I've read mostly positive reviews of the 4.11 - 4.12 patches regarding the improvements to AI characteristics. All good, I look forward to installing these patches, thanks to the good people and their work on our behalf. However, have the following issues been addressed?

1) Previously, if the AI aircraft's performance in Quick mission is greater that yours, it climbs away to begin a series of endless 'jousting' head on passes/bounces. No dogfighting ever, just jousting - endless jousting. Has anyone else ever been able to close in dogfight a P-51 with a Me 109, Fw 190?

It actually did happen, no, really it did. Honest to God, it really did happen occasionally.

I can only do so using another simm. Never mind this is not historical in the main, that the vast majority of encounter were close in dogfighting. The opportunity to see how one aircraft would compare in a dogfight with another is N/A - my chief complaint with Il-2 over the years. I know many love jousting and bouncing, but would it hurt to at least somehow be able just once to acutally dogfight another aircraft? Just once?

2) If one chooses to dogfifght with multiple AI aircraft, for some unknown reason the AI aircraft become rocket powered, absolutely boosted performance. I actually most time enjoy this as it ads challenge, but at the same time I'm aware that this is an inaccuracy, and I would like to see how I would fare against multiple aircraft with realistic flight characteristics maintained even with increased number of advesaries.

Love Il-2, many thanks to all who created it and are working to improve the product. Just please accept as recommendations to improve the brand.

1) So, let me understand you here; you buy a game that attempts to provide a realistic virtual experience of WW2 air combat and are complaining that it's too realistic?

Errrrr.... sorry, my cerebral logic fuse just tripped. Try again later.


2) Boosted performance? I have not detected anything of that nature. Sure the AI can calculate to the last degree centigrade when they overheat and trim perfectly, so they have a marginal advantage over a breather, but I've never seen the rocket ship behavior you describe, plus you have an innate ability to abstract. Believe me the advantage is with you.

I suspect your self-confessed love of dogfighting is causing you to blow what energy you have in a series of heavy handed yank & bank manoeuvres as you target fixate and desperately try and get a guns solution on one e/a. Suddenly you find yourself low, slow and out of talent as the AI who have kept height and speed - and therefore initiative - come in and force you lower and slower till you are inevitably blown out of the sky or in a panicky avoidance manoeuvre misjudge or over control and put your self in the dirt.

Air combat and dogfighting are not one and the same. Neither are they mutually exclusive. I suspect that you need to learn to pick your fights better, fight more energy economically and learn to read the fight better so that you cotton on when it's going against you and you need to disengage.

It's not up to the developers to undo all their hard work to make this sim as realistic as possible in order to cater for your lack of skill.

I recommend you take some time, read and absorb this: http://www.virtualpilots.fi/feature/.../inpursuit.pdf

Hi Pugo, the AI aircraft are more aggressive and evade better in the new patches, though the ones with speed and/or climb advantages still like to use those advantages to "joust," as you describe it.

However, I believe it was the 4.11 patch that introduced something new to QMB: the ability to give yourself an altitude and/or a position advantage over your opponent. Want to make that 109 fight rather than just climb away? Give yourself a 500, 1000, or even 2000m starting altitude advantage over him and he won't have a choice.

I'm glad that you recognize that this is a game that should be fun, I think the changes to the QMB options and to the AI behaviour of the last two patches have made it more so.

Whoever told you that or however you got that idea, it is wrong. 75% of downed planes pilots never saw their attacker.

But you can read stories and construct a selective reality, join Gaston and start preaching that FW-190's were actually better low speed turners than Spitfires and other I-can-read-words nonsense.

The AI has several obvious performance boosts and other advantages, but the mistakes that even an ace AI opponent sometimes does are huge.

There are way's of countering this, but you have to quick on the controls.
if you're the target.. you must lead the attacker in a ever tightening turn. without letting it's nose get a lead on you. Pointing directly at you is fine as the deflection will cause it to miss.
Watching the a/c all through the attack, it will break off and zoom off. This is when you flip, in a flick-turn (after a bit of practise) and you have your nose pointing at him for a passing shot. Speed is not important.. doing damage is.

After a few of those.. the AI will bugger off, a human most likely will not try a second attack.


DF's were more popular in the beginning of WW2, and less so towards the end, but they did happen.
All the conflicting combat reports are most probably factual, what of course is missing is the aircraft and pilot quality, and the exact situational details at the time of the report. This seems to have led to conflicts in interpretation with the armchair combat pilots here.

Doing it as you say, will increase you situational awareness considerably, as you learn to keep track of multiple aircraft. You also develop better tactics when handling multiple attackers.
:)

Interesting observation. What would these aerodynamic boosts to AI be?
I know theres probably no g-lock for AI first of all. Second of all, is the AI performed barrell-roll defense, during which not only is the defender rolling insanely fast, but he is also outrunning a faster attacker! This looks quite baffling when its done by the AI. I mean, it is done with a shallow diving barrel-roll, but equally importantly constant rolling
ought to slow their speed down quite a bit, right?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Pugo3 (Post 509059) While I'm on the subjsect of aircraft performance... I've read mostly positive reviews of the 4.11 - 4.12 patches regarding the improvements to AI characteristics. All good, I look forward to installing these patches, thanks to the good people and their work on our behalf. However, have the following issues been addressed? 1) Previously, if the AI aircraft's performance in Quick mission is greater that yours, it climbs away to begin a series of endless 'jousting' head on passes/bounces. No dogfighting ever, just jousting - endless jousting. Has anyone else ever been able to close in dogfight a P-51 with a Me 109, Fw 190? It actually did happen, no, really it did. Honest to God, it really did happen occasionally. I can only do so using another simm. Never mind this is not historical in the main, that the vast majority of encounter were close in dogfighting. The opportunity to see how one aircraft would compare in a dogfight with another is N/A - my chief complaint with Il-2 over the years. I know many love jousting and bouncing, but would it hurt to at least somehow be able just once to acutally dogfight another aircraft? Just once? 2) If one chooses to dogfifght with multiple AI aircraft, for some unknown reason the AI aircraft become rocket powered, absolutely boosted performance. I actually most time enjoy this as it ads challenge, but at the same time I'm aware that this is an inaccuracy, and I would like to see how I would fare against multiple aircraft with realistic flight characteristics maintained even with increased number of advesaries. Love Il-2, many thanks to all who created it and are working to improve the product. Just please accept as recommendations to improve the brand.

Probably/possibly

The AI became predictable over the years and as far as I can ascertain from posts made by various TD members most of them fly Offline or in Dog Fight servers.

Offline the experience with AI become to easy to kill i suppose,
so the AI were given better routines to improve offline experience,
but this made it difficult in CooP missions where the AI can be predominate and make up 70% of the aircraft in the mission
making it a nightmare with crazy AI maneuvers everywhere and instant ace makers blowing your brains out.

So your experience with the AI behavior is different from a lot of us who have had them fly straight and level as drones to rolling flipping and zoom climbing freaks,
but were are grateful somethings being done with the AI but the day they do a "Split S" or "Cuban 8" in a fight will be a welcome one.

Im sure the AI are constantly on the "improvement list" and are definitely heading in the right direction.

:)





Play nice please.

In 4.11 and 4.12 the AI have more varied defensive techniques and don't do the endless barrel roll defense which is simultaneously annoying and somewhat predictable.

Usually the roll is combined with a shallow dive allowing the defensive move to go on for quite a long time. It works online against human opponents too :)

The AI didn't become predictable. Players just got good enough to begin predicting the AI. If the AI ever "think ahead" beyond the one move they are doing it will be a major step worthy of a whole new game.

First of all in the QMB you have to make all of your wingmen aces or veterans.. otherwise they will not support you correctly .. secondly if you have more than one flight of enemies make your enemies average or rookies .. if you have 3 flights you can make one flight a veteran flight. If you do not do this you will be gangbanged before you know it and you will be very frustrated. The AI in 4.12.1 is very good.. the best it has ever been. I would like to see the ability to set individual pilot skillsets in the QMB instead of flight skill sets..

I thought it best to avoid directly answering the one respondant who demonstrates the unfortunate tendancy of too many forum perons these days to reply with rather condenscending, dismissive, and demeaning remarks after first misrepresenting and attaching all sorts of malice to my comments. Such persons are best left to themselves, a fitting punishment in itself.

It is an historical fact that 51's and 47's did dogfight with German fighters on occasion, the accounts are plentiful and you've all read them, no need to make this string a mulitpage tangle of combat accounts quotes to make the point. In QMB, a 51 and 47 will not dogfight, only fly away and joust. Mock, dispute, slander, misrepresent all you wish if you are so inclined, this stands.

Fly a Bf 109E7 against a Spitfire V 1941 one on one.
Fly a Bf 109E7 against a squadron of Spitfire V 1941. Nevermind what our dismissive associate states, see for yourself. Not rocket powered, of course this was overstated, but definitely all Spits are demonstably faster, with higher climbs rates, etc. Try it with other enemy AI aircraft your familiar with.

I inquired only if these failings had been addressed. No honest person of worth would consider this a request for making the game unrealistic. Rather, both of these shortcomings detract from the game and if anything render it unrealistic by not allowing one to experience this aspect of combat flying.

thanks to all who replied with constructive comments while maintaining personal integrity and good faith.

I don't know how or why multiple opponents would get this "boost" that they wouldn't get in a 1v1. I think it can only be perception; even if you're watching your energy you still have to make more energy-consuming moves than any single opponent, so they end up higher and faster than you. I experience the same thing online, where I know my opponents don't get a performance boost just by being close to each other.

You come out with a falsehood from the start and somehow you're a victim.
Predictable.

9-1-1? Please send the Whaaaaambulance!

See above reply, nothing new here, only a reveal of the essence of the one making such remarks.

p3

Excuse me for incredulousness at your post when you expect the developers to pander to your desire for dogfight entertainment and reverse years of attempting to make this game as realistic as the limitations of the engine & platform allow.

The AI as in it's current 4.12 form are the most realistic I have seen; in co-ops I find it difficult at times to tell the breathers from the bots. That in and of itself speaks volumes to me about the excellent work FC has done in manipulating the AI dogfight routines.

If my critique of your flying style came across as condescending then it was as a direct result of your ill-informed, presumptuous and mildly insulting post; not to me but to FC, who I suspect has devoted hundreds of - no doubt frustrating - man hours of investigating, experimenting and tweaking the code to get it to the frankly best level I've seen in any sim of late.

I stand by my opinion of why I think you are running into difficulties and why the AI *appear* to you to be turbo boosted. True an element is down to the AI knowing to the second how long they can risk overheating in WEP and are perfectly trimmed in all flight regimes, however if you fight smart you can negate these attributes with your ability to abstract and read the overall fight picture in a way no AI can hope to.

I don't deny more than one-turn dogfights did happen; but their frequency was so low as to be a tiny fraction of the overall percentage. 9 times out of 10 the victim did not even see their attacker.

On top of this your reference to P-51/P-47 combat reports is crucially flawed. The vast majority of the Jagdwaffe pilots by the 1944 era were inexperienced, rushed through training and could just about handle the skills to takeoff land and fly formation; they did not have the tactical nous to be able to understand the dogfight environment and pulled all the wrong moves when defensive; as such because they had such little experience in handling their aircraft at or beyond the limits of it's performance or crucially where their advantages lay against their opponents they bleed their E and just make the job easier for the teamworking USAAF fighter jocks.

Oh, hang on, that scenario sounds familiar... like someone whining that they keep getting gang-banged by teamworking AI that keeps up it's E. Hmmmm. Funny that.

"Pander to your desire for dogfight entertainment," "whaaambulance," snarky critiques of piloting abilities, what's the matter with you guys?

The QMB is obviously not a place for hyper-realism, it's for setting up "what if" scenarios. Like, what if I spawn in on my opponent's six, 1000m above him, and he has 100% fuel and no ammo and is a rookie and is alone, and I have 20% fuel and an ace wingman. Realistic?

If you can already set all those variables, then why not also be able to set the aggressiveness and likeliness to dogfight of your opponent? Like a lot of online pilots in planes better suited for hit and run do, you know, for fun?

People come in with revisionist agendas, making false assertions and acting like they're right when they're not. Sorry "victim" but you started it and I'm not the only one who's not eating the BS you put on our table.

Woke Up Dead, anyone can set up QMB as they like. With FMB they can even set up the waypoints the targets will use. Make the enemies rookies if that's what it takes... the game already does that and more! Nobody is saying that everyone has to play the same.

As far as historic, goooooood luck! You can approach elements of history but it's a flight sim and game AI hasn't got the resources to make strategy.

Hey FC! Is it possible to network with PC's that only run AI client? No graphics or input devices, all resources given to AI? What could be achieved then, even with older PC's?

Combat reports do contain examples of dogfighting and close in energy fights... they also contain reports of mass bounces and not much else. In the QMB I see plenty of both.

I'd like to see what a joust looks like. Could you record us a track of this particular behavior?

Also I'd like to know why a P-51 Mustang should engage in any sort of close in dogfight behavior when its against the strengths of the fighter... similarly I expect a Zero to engage in a close in fight using its turn advantage to maximum effect and avoiding flight regimes that involve too much speed.

Joust is two fighters making head on attacks. Those happened in history every so often, some planes seem almost made for it with a big radial block in front and devastating firepower to go with it. Even the P-38 got a reputation, whoa those guns!

But lessons got learned and aerial suicide avoided. Imagine if every P-51 pilot jousted with every FW pilot he met? The USAAF would have run out of P-51's and pilots pretty quick.

I suppose the rookie level AI is a little bit too good in this game.

I mean, we are talking about the lowest level skill pilot we can have in game. One could argue they're quite a bit better than the new pilots Germany had in 1945 for example (re-assigned bomber pilot into fighters, practically no advanced fighter training etc....)

rookies were the guys who confused their flight leaders for enemies (like erich hartmann once did :D) and tried to dogfight them. Or then they would just get lost in the skies. I mean these people were given limited training before sent to the front (for example, even American flight training was quite limited in scope, before pilots were sent from flight school to the front). And compared with most countries fighter training, it (American) was the most comprehensive one. There wasn't top gun school back then, only the basic courses, and a few flights on gunnery training.

rookie should be nerfed further, to replicate that they would be lowest skill pilots. (greenhorns, newbies)

-aircraft identification (esp headons). So they don't always know to blast away, would such a thing happen in real war? Before you can know if he's friend or foe? Merge happens for example, because of IDing bogey. In WW2 it meant silhouette ID or the insignia, if you wanted to be certain of friend-or-foe.

probably not unless you could visually ID the rest of the silhouette of the plane from a slight angle, before committing to headon attack. (special exception would be radial vs inline and such things... i.e. p38)

-AI tracking skill (situational awareness) Rookie should be significantly worse than veteran, and ace.

See this is what I thought but the AI does it so infrequently that I thought maybe he was using the word incorrectly and it was in reference to boom and zoom energy tactics which is also not dogfighting :)

The initial pass does tend to be head on when the QMB is set to default. I like to setup advantage/disadvantage scenarios as well. Mixes things up. But after that its an all bets are off... it does not tend to be a lot of tail chasers but it also doesn't tend to be a continual head on after head on. I almost never see that... Then again I usually go nose up immediately, gain about 500 or more meters, then level out build my speed and make an aggressive angled shot into the initial formation breaking it up and separating out the fighters so I can pick them off. Veteran, Ace, Regular... none of them think tactically. They just react :)

You know what WUD, you are right. I reacted badly. However, I found my resentment piqued by Pugos attitude. There's ways and means. if he had come in asking for assistance as to why it is he's having so much difficulty with the AI and what he can do to minimise its apparent advantages, I'd have been much more civil.

Instead he waltzes in and has the temerity to demand that years of hard work trying to get the AI to the convincing level it is now are thrown away just so he can get more kills. It's the classic "you should do the hard work so i don't have to" attitude I see insidiously infecting the social mentality nowadays and it raises my hackles. Why not try asking oneself "what am I doing wrong, how can I improve?"

Granted. However, the product is what it is, and strives towards as realistic an experience as the parameters of it's platform & programming limitations allow. Is it perfect? Of course not, but it's a bloody convincing and enjoyable effort. In that spirit, the what if's are also constrained by those parameters and those of the game. If you want a swirling multi-plane melee with everyone trying like hell to turn themselves inside out getting on each others tails - which I have done many times 1-v-1 in Il-2 against the AI (try a P-38J against a 109G-10) - then go buy War Thunder.

As cool as that would be I suspect it's asking too much of both FatCat99 and the Il-2 game engine. It was something that was supposed to be a variable in CloD but unless Team Fusion can work their magic with it I don't know how far we'll see it progress. And even then, having an Ace AI trying to dogfight a Spitfire in Bf109 in the classic interpretation of that term seems paradoxical. In the meantime I stand by my opinion of Il-2 AI air combat tactics - it's the best i have seen in ANY flightsim of recent years and has even fooled me into thinking it was one of my squadmates on occasion.

P3:
While there are problems with the human interpretation of the AI (trust me DCS is a lot worse wrt AI).. TDs IL2 AI (v412) is.. repeat, IS the best I've seen for a long time. AI long term tactics, I'm sure are still a problem.. but QMB seems to suffice in this regard.

What a lot of people seems to forget, is that the 'relative performances' of the IL2 aircraft seem to reasonably accurate - and there are a lot of aircraft. An aircraft's specific RL performance might not be up-to-scratch.. but for online WW2 'jousting', it is the best so far - even for a 13 year old engine.

What it always comes down to.. is knowing your a/c, whether it's IL2/DCS or RL, and the limits you can push it too.

:)

wheter I won't dig on the attitude of pugo3, I agree with the "core" of his post: He state for a -average level player in off line game (we are not speaking of such a enthusiast-super ace player..like probably many of you here are answering to him..) that A.i. code is set wrong -(and IT IS-wrong). summarizing here for enemy 1-1 just to be quick and clear:

1) rookie A.I. -- SHOULD be passibile to be approached with few manouvers and grounded very easily with few salvo (and now it insn't) even flying a globally superior ac.
2) average A.I. -- SHOULD be approached with more elaborated manouvers and player have chance to aim and tease with his gunnery (catching him occasionally).
3) veteran A.I. -- SHOULD be approached using good manouvers, quite challege option here, involving the quality and charateristic of the AC that player/A.I. are flying that start to be relevant to determine the success of A.I. or of the player at the end of the fighting moments.
4) Ace A.I. -- SHOULD be a matter of experience and ability of the player, without forget that A.I. SHOULD NOT "see you" miles away before the human sight (and this is not true nowaday.. A.i. 1946 4.xxx see you much more before you..check this.)

all this without forget that nowaday is indiscuss that:
a) A.I. attitude of flying, engine management is ALWAYS mathematical perfect. (even in Rookie..)
b) A.I. don't have G-stress/blackout-redout effect.
c) A.I. under your attack receve IMMEDIATE help from his wingman.. always..and this is not replicate at the same by YOUR wingman (do you have noticed this ?.. I think so;)...

So gents, we all know you are all ACE pilots here.. ok.. but do you want to admit just for honesty that even if you are SO BRAVE to pass over those wrong cheats in A.I. code programming, that THOSE are inconfutable bugs into the code still present since the insane introduction of the OLEG silly idea "A.I. will perform depending by player action" released very long patches (and ages..) in the past. And now do you realize that your mirable and revered TD team have just emphatized over and over this buggy feature in every new pach they have edited.. .sadly. I will prefer not to have rolling planes on the airport like we have now in 4.12.. But to have a decent A.I. like the one in BOB II for istance.. Miles over the buggy-cheatty :) A.I. and now worse than ever we have thanks to TD.

Stop to suck up TD feet gents! .be man and put constructive but strong criticism to TD about their lack on A.I. code of 1946: yes, they work for free..but this not an excuse to give us bad results.

Your logic is as bad as your spelling and your expectations are far worse.

I look forward to your award winning breakthrough combat flight sim with BoB AI or better. Now get cracking, Christmas is coming and I want it before then.

Where did you get "inconfutable"? Sarah Palin? Or from the same place she gets her ignorantisms? And yes, I made that word up just for you and Sarah.

While Il-2 is still a worthwhile investment for the offline player, perhaps the best on the market, it could be indeed better. Shortcomings of campaign/career modes aside, the AI imbalance issues are something of a problem to the online player too, at least if you want to play coops; often you just can't get enough human players to man all slots, so AI has to fill the gaps, or act as the entire opposition in human vs ai - missions.

But now, to more important things:

Sarah Palin is awesome! :mad: I didn't think she was awesome in any way, until I saw the movie. I kind of felt sympathy towards her. Or towards the fictional character based on Sarah Palin. It doesn't matter. Anyway, I understand that you made a jest, but please, people, say nothing negative about her! It's people like her who could put some pressure on companies like Northtrop-Grumman!

The Batman character was awesome in that last movie too. Too bad it's scripted fiction and what we saw was no way real. Find Sarah without a script like in the Couric interview. I wouldn't let her be president of a bake sale.

AI in 4.12 is absolutely the best ever in the history of the sim.
However, these points are sadly true, and need fixing:
Further problems are:
-AI opens fire at ridiculous distances, (up to 6-700m) with great accuracy
-Sometimes, exclusively under the player's command, it is really stupid. For example, they spot the enemy, you order them to attack, and they just fly huge circles aimlessly.

I've thought this myself. "Pitiable," "Turkey Shoot" or "Straight from the Farm" level AI would certainly be suitable for most kamikazes, or possibly the worst of the Chinese pilots.

This isn't quite fair. Reassigned bomber pilots might have thousands of hours flying heavier combat aircraft types, meaning that they'd have Veteran to Ace level skills in navigation and target identification, and Average to Veteran level routine piloting skills and situational awareness, but Rookie level gunnery, combat maneuvering and combat situational awareness.

This means that they'd be quite good at doing things like taking off, landing, holding formation and following fighter intercept to the target, then identifying targets and setting up attacks, but not so good at hitting the target, and potentially quite poor in a dogfight.

Sadly, IL2 doesn't give mission builders the ability to set different skill levels for different tasks.

IL2 doesn't model the risk of deliberate attack by friendly planes due to failure of target identification. This was a real problem for Allied planes like the P-51 or Typhoon (or Soviet fighters encountering Western Allied fighters). I don't think it would be that hard to implement as an AI feature, but for now such encounters have to be set up as specific missions with the "friendly" planes being assigned to the opposing side.

I think that U.S. training was actually pretty good, at least by 1944. Pre-war training was good, but there was a dip in quality in 1942-43. It wouldn't be unreasonable to call "rookie" 1944 U.S. pilots "Average" in terms of IL2 pilot quality.

If it was possible to do so, I'd give your typical newly-minted USAAF/USMC 1944 2nd Lieutenant/USN Ensign fighter pilot:

Navigation: Average.
Target Recognition: Average
Routine Piloting (e.g., aircraft system maintenance, formation flying, landing and take-off): Average
Combat Situational Awareness: Rookie
Air Combat Maneuvers/Aerobatics: Rookie
Gunnery: Rookie
Bombing: Rookie
Rockets: Rookie

By contrast, a 1940 British Pilot Officer or 1942 Soviet junior Lieutenant straight from training might be "rookie" across the board, while a 1945 kamikaze would be "turkey shoot" quality in all but target recognition which would be "average."

In some cases, it's possible to identify an aircraft from head-on by things like size, wing angle and fuselage cross section. Additionally, even with a big HD monitor, the human eye gives more detail than a computer screen can, which might be enough to pick up things like color and distinctive reflections.
Finally, IL2 doesn't include the option for radar vectoring or mission briefings, which give useful information like altitude and heading for bogies, or "any twin-engined planes in the sky today will be hostile."

Even so, target recognition was a problem, especially with sun glare, clouds and darkness, and IL2 doesn't reflect that.

I'd simplify target recognition down to a percentage change of mistaking a target from each "o'clock" angle, with chances slightly increased for rookies and reduced for veteran or better pilots, and possibly with increases for planes of a rarely-encountered nationality. And, with exceptions for distinctive planes like the P-38 or Me323.

I an official report about Galland stated in April 1944 (my translation): "The numerical relation for fights during daylight is now about 1:7. The quality of training of Americans is extraordinarily high. The (German) fighter force has lost much more than 1000 pilots during the last four months, amongst them the best of our squadron commanders and wing leaders. These gaps cannot be filled. We loose with every intrusion (of American bombers) about 50 fighters."
A little later Jochen Prien wrote in the chronicle of JG 53 about the time of the invasion (my translation): ...we never achieved a better relation in the air than approx. 1 : 25; notably it was never achieved to concentrate the intended number of 800 fighters for the defence against the invasion in France - on 10th of June 1944 all in all 475 Bf 109 and Fw 150 were available in France, only 290 of which were clear to be used."
At this time the fighter pilot training had gone down to about 110-120 hours of flight training (approx. 2 hours in a glider, 50 hours basic training in piston engine Trainers, 40 hours in a fighter pilot school and 20 hours in an "Ergänzungsgruppe"). The "Windhund" (Greyhound) - programme tried to turn bomber-pilots into fighter-pilots with 20 hours of training.
During late ´44 and ´45 the fighter training became constantly worse, Erich Hartman complained that pilots were sent to him with less than 60 hours of flight training. As far as I know more rookies where killed while trying to land than because of combat. The majority of pilots trained in 1944 did not survive their first ten missions. The "aces" of the Luftwaffe were those who were trained before the war or during its first years and were experienced and lucky enough to survive for some time. Many of them had to fly more than 1000 or even 1500 missions.
All these things are facts, as hard a the performance data of any given aircraft and they certainly played a similarly important role in the outcome of the war. And NO I am not romanticizing anything, because I don´t see any romance in sending helpless boys of any nation to certain death, and I am not revisionist, because I am damned glad that the Nazis lost the war, so I could grow up in freedom.
But all this was reality. Il-2 is a game. It tries, in my opinion very successfully to recreate some aspects of aerial fighting in WWII. But there are very obviously some extremely important things that cannot be simulated. We do not scream in panic and we do not **** ourselves in terror as real life fighter pilots did, because we run no risk. We feel no pain when a message appears "player heavily bleeding" and when the screen turns black, we just repeat the mission. Strange as it is, we do it for fun. Now how much fun would it be for a virtual P-51 pilot to fly hours and hours escort duty and never see an enemy, because they are all grounded due to lack of fuel? How much fun would it be to finally find some rookie and shoot him down, while he is desperately trying to land his crate? All this would be realistic, but it would make a very poor game. Online it is even less realistic, because there are guys on both sides with experience and practise in "flying" and shooting, any ace of WWII could only dream of. But that IS the fun: the challenge. And even for a bad pilot as me, rookie AI is no challenge.
A game like IL-2 will never be realistic, but I think the original developers did a great job in getting as close to realism as was possible at the time. And Team Daidalos is since then improving the game in an astonishing way. With every new patch the whining starts that this or that plane, whether red r blue got "nerved" and naturally this is because the developers or the TD guys have some dislikes or prejudices of even a secret agenda ...
Just learn to fly and you will be able to shoot down "superior" planes (of any side), because you are the better pilot. And this IS realistic.

Every developer of every combat flight sim has been accused to taking sides and porking or neutering planes, usually on all sides.

The odds vary when you count fighters vs fighters or all planes vs fighters and local ratios vs total sortied.

This tread actually has some very good instructional information in it.
I've picked up that aircraft management and energy management were ace makers,....and lot of studying.

Good info. Thanks for posting.

"Fun" depends on your expectations. Yes, a long escort mission followed by nothing to shoot out of the air sucks if you were hoping for dogfighting. Likewise, a "turkey shoot" is no fun if you were looking for a challenge.

On the other hand, if you want to emulate some of the experiences of a 1944-era P-51 pilot, you expect those sorts of missions as part of the campaign, try to take away something new from an otherwise boring mission, or just set your plane on autopilot and accelerate the time to get through them. Maybe not as fun as constant turn-and-burn dogfighting, but still "fun" for some folks.

And, if you're not having fun, it also speaks to a lack of imagination, not just by mission builders, but also by the player. If there are no planes in the air, go down and strafe. If there's nothing to strafe, practice your acrobatics, combat maneuvers or formation flying. And, if none of that appeals, there's always the option to exit the mission as soon as the campaign allows and try something new.

IMO, "fun" is a game that models reality as closely as possible while giving as many options as possible, then steps out of the way to allow mission and campaign builders to create scenarios which appeal to all sorts of different people. Intense constant dogfighting is a very popular way to have fun, but it's not the only one.

"Fun" is flying 109F-2's against I-16's and LaGG-3's then crying later on when the situation favors the other side by a lesser amount. But I think that in 1944 to the end there was such consternation in the home of the master race that what they saw was unmistakably not what was supposed to be.

It's not up to the developers to undo all their hard work to make this sim as realistic as possible in order to cater for your lack of skill.http://nexlson.wissensde.com/1.jpghttp://nexlson.wissensde.com/2.jpghttp://nexlson.wissensde.com/3.jpghttp://nexlson.wissensde.com/4.jpghttp://nexlson.wissensde.com/5.jpg

But the developers should PRIMARY work on correcting the wrong and cheat A.I. code.
This shoud be done not for cater any lack of skill but this should be made just to take in consideration all work of test and criticism by all people in the community addressed HERE about A.i. wrong behaviour that are still present into the game after years.. But TD seem at the contrary more interested to emphatize all this wrong aspects:

- A.I. now kill you with a single head-on pass (...)
- Firing to any A.I. result in an -immediate- salvo into your tail from another A.I.

just only to tell FEW of most evident -cheat-A.I.-behaviours- that are becoming worse and worse after any pach released by TD.

The AI has been given a huge makeover and is so much better than it used to be. It can deflection shoot, it takes shots and guesses in a more realistic way, it can't see through itself like it used to... this is considered more cheating?

Well, Im quite satisfied with the AI (even though there are a few problems). But, for example that AI is immune to G effects, or AI can hit you up to 6-700meters, can be considered as cheating.

Immune to G effects, yes that may well be. And should and will perhaps be corrected.
And AI can hit you at 600 to 700m, yes. But usually they use up a lot of ammo to get that hit -and if you do not fly straight and level it does not happen that often. This is no cheat IMHO, because I can do it, too -though I will usually not do that -waste of ammo.

As for AI insta killing you in every head on, that does not happen to me. Though I usually avoid head-on passes, because it gives the enemy a low deflection shot at critical areas of my plane. There are certain situations where it is almost unavoidable to go into head-on passes if you want to shoot at the enemy at all (e.g. faster, less manuverable plane with worse climb, Bf110 vs. AI Hurricane). If I open up fire before the enemy does it most of the times discourages AI to fire at you - so one short burst in the general direction, and another trying to hit.

And by now I have shot down hundreds of AI planes without beeing shot down near instantly by its wingmen.

If you engage the enemy, ALWAYS have an idea how you will get out of the fight, if you don't you may well get out of the fight at a parachute.
It is easy if you have the faster plane and an altitude advantage -you can engage and disengage at will. But do not let the AI team kill you -while one drags you down the others keep thier alt and if you fall for it you are at a disadvantage.
If you have the faster plane and less altitude, judgement call, if you think you can waste the enemys initial advantge, go for it, else turn, climb, come back
If you only have the altitude advantage, you need to make the most of it. Leave the fight before you use up your advantage. And AI is quite good at team tactics here, so you need to disengage before one of them (usually not the on in front of you) gains an advantage.
If you have neither alt advantage nor the faster plane, you are where you should not be and in trouble, and you have made mistakes to get there. You can still make some of it, if you can outturn or outroll the enemy, do so. But vs. multiple AI you are near helpless, and again the AI will work together and while you try to defend vs. one of them the other will get in a good position and you need to defend against that and so on.

But basically if YOU get shot down, then YOU made a mistake.

Since yesterday when visiting this thread and when posting I get:

Malicious URL blocked from my AV.

Problem is in
http://nexlson.wissensde.com/2.jpg

Could 1C Publishing deal with this please, I'm going to have to run ANOTHER SCAN to find ANOTHER bit of MALWARE on my drive.

I wonder how many others got that and had nothing blocked?

What a great pilot you are m8... please post a track of your good skill engaging 8 vs 8 veteran A.I. (and notice that I even not ask for "ace" A.I. setting;).. 109 K4 with a spit LF IXe seeing you killing all of them, show us what a ace you are not only with words... .I'm waiting to see you... may be ..but don't cheat you eh? ;)

Immunity to G effects is still very likely an issue... give the guys some time and I'm sure they can make the AI deal with that too. There was some effort to make the gunners more affected by G effects too and that's worked fairly well.

The AI shooting you at 700 meters isn't cheating... I can do that. If a plane flies straight enough then I can even do it semi-reliably (i.e. not a lucky one in a million type shot). Particularly if I have a fighter with guns mounted in the nose (Yak, 109, P-38, etc.).

Well, this is primarily the problem of AI bombers. They are quite accurate at those distances. The 20mm at the tail of the G4M is a good example, but the american bombers are also quite good at sniping you from 6-700 meters, even at rookie skill level.

Ouch I just had some really tough battles withbf109-g6/as vs yak3p in my campaign.

I could basically fight earlier battles quite well bf109g-6 vs la5

But that yak3p is a monster lol. And there was something like 12 of them in final mission.

Honestly I felt like they had definitely some g-force advantage. MAYBE even roll rate advantage (or the roll rate is just perception of the sluggish bf109 controls)

I shot down like two of them. One was head on, diving from climb. I felr like there wasnt muh to do because the mission started as a scraamble and yaks were almost on top of us anyway. I had the mk108, but barely got any shooting opportunities at all.

Yaks were just buzzing around like ufos and wasting my AI-buddies. It was a sad sight I tell you. Sad to see my own AIs turnfighting with yaks and wasting all their E.

Honestly I would say that somehow my own team AI seems a lot worse in these kind of matchups. And my own AI wingman always abandons me just so he can turnfigjt with a llow flying yak (when there are multiple high bogeys aheaad in sight).

Lol if the bomber gunners were as accurate irl when compared to il2 accuracy. Clearly the bomber gunners should have been reassigned to fighter pilot training! War would have been over by christmas 1939 lol.

I mean judging by gun cam footage, fighter vs fighter was hard enough to do. Luftwaffe managed about 2% gunstat vs heavy bombers in real life (1944-45)

Yak-3P? Dont be surprised, thats a cheat plane! In reality, it was nothing more than an unsuccessful pre-series aircraft, which never fought. There were lots of unsolved problems with the engine, and it was so incredibly unreliable that development was abandoned finally. In your campaign, use basic Yak-3 instead.

I think you're thinking about the Yak-3 with the VK-107. The Yak-3P is pretty much identical with the Yak-3 except for the substitution of the 2xUBS+1xShVAK with 3xB-20 guns. According to wikipedia, serial production started in August 1945 and nearly 600 were built.

Sorry you misread me, I am a mediocre pilot at best -and I do get shot down by AI (but less and less), but not because AI cheats, but because I do make mistakes.
As for your duell 8 109K4 vs. 8 SpitLFIXe -you are IMHO expecting to much from the start -killing all is way too much. I also don't think that happened ever in real life. So why should it be doable in Il2-?
Try real life goals -for starters engaging your 8 Spit and surviving.
And then get into real good position, use the sun in your back, or go lower than the enemy so they do not spot you early (yes, you can surprise the AI since 4.11), shoot at one of them, and get the hell outa there - that is what a good real life pilot probably would have done.
Net result: Maybe you got one enemy. But you still live -you can try again. Rinse, wash, repeat. Or don't.
Or try TnB style fighting and claim getting shot down on the mad AI skills.

I'm of the opinion too that your own AI does not work well with you, and most of the times doesn't bother too much about what you order them to do.

m8, whatever you say you have to admit what the reality of il2 1946 is now with A.I. : IT CHEAT. and it cheat more and more patch after patch. It is UBER A.I. EVEN IN AVERAGE LEVEL. They shoot at you at incredible distance with no challenge to survive. I know what you are tell about "my mistakes" but you have to discern Your mistakes to UBER-& CHEATING A.I. coded by DT that is a FACT. Is simple to verify. try to make a clean copy of your game patched just to 4.7 (still is a possible and easy downgrade of the game..) try to load a quick combat 8-8 spit/me109 (whatever version just same year of production..43, 44, 45 eg.) -and that is however a Historical dogfight ;) set all to -average- level (just to notice that I want to give chance even to a medium level player..) Now try to challenge this quick mission and you will notice how more "real" is the balance between you and your team vs A.I. - Now try same mission in 4.12.1 game version and tell me how many SECONDS you survive (....) sun or not sun help.. clouds or not clouds help....altitude advantage help.... energy management strategy.... speed management ... m8, you can argue and try whatever tactic you want but the sad and frustrate result is always the same: you not survive more than about 30-60 sec after engaging the dogfight. this is not possible. .. and isn't historic... is this a SIMULATOR? Then I would like to SIMULATE WWII aereal combats! ..not to challege with a UBER-CHEATING A.I. for just 60 sec every mission ending with a prompt bullets salvo into my tail or in front of my engine just every time.

Could you show us some tracks of examples where the AI cheat? A track and the timecode when you spot roughly where the AI is performing one of these cheats would be useful surely.

:lol: is a rethoric question I presume no?......

However You can simply try the mission I suggested above (8 vs 8 spit/bf average quick mission) and you will find how many situation you want where you can see dozen of:
- Perfect deflection shooting by A.I. killing you (even in roll up/down situation ...)
- Uber climbing A.I.
- Uber rolling A.I.
- perfect front-shooting at one-pass to your cockpit/ engine.
- Your tail scratched by a uber a.I. wingmen appeared in 0,0001 millisecond at your tail immediately just when you try to shoot an enemy in front of you.

try to yourself and you will see m8 ...

I play the QMB regularly... so...

- Perfect deflection shooting by A.I. killing you (even in roll up/down situation ...) - NOPE didn't see it
- Uber climbing A.I. - Didn't see this either
- Uber rolling A.I. - This is a problem, agreed... only with some aircraft oddly
- perfect front-shooting at one-pass to your cockpit/ engine. - Not any better than I can do.
- Your tail scratched by a uber a.I. wingmen appeared in 0,0001 millisecond at your tail immediately just when you try to shoot an enemy in front of you. - I always shoot the wingman first... but they do latch on fairly well if you go after the leader and ignore.

+1

If anything, AI fixed gunnery has gotten unrealistically bad for Veteran and Ace pilots. Skilled human pilots are considerably better than the current version of AI. Of course, since human fixed gunners can ignore things like plane vibration, gun recoil, G-forces and so forth, maybe human players are unrealistically accurate.

OTOH, the problems with perfect climbing angle and engine management have been pretty well fixed in this current patch, at least for Average or Rookie AI - which is about like it should be.

AI flexible gunnery is still too deadly, especially at long ranges and for certain aircraft, but nothing that isn't manageable as long as you don't use stupid tactics to engage bombers. But, fly along the same vector for more than a few seconds and you're likely to get hit.

Yep. It's just stupid to put yourself between the lead plane and his wingman. Unless you're making a head-on pass or a B'n'Z attack against a target whose wingman isn't in a position to respond, you always go for the wingman first.

Somehow this discussion reminds me very much of the time when I had to teach evolution theory in an islamic country.
You can´t fight believe with reason.
The attack of the unsinkable rubber ducks ...

I also play lots of QMB, usually against veteran skill level AI.

But, I found it quite easy to dodge the AI's head-on shots. Two methods:
1, shoot first. AI will be scared, and evades.
2, fly upside down, then roll back+evade. AI tries to calculate the deflection angle, but he is usually too late.
Besides immunity to G, and sniping you from great distances (mainly bombers), I dont think AI cheats at all. There are a few cheat planes, like La-5/7 or Yak-3-VK107, but they only have overmodeled FM. You can also cheat with these.

I noticed similar in the IJA campaign. American planes cooperate extremely well, but it is manageable if you are careful. Strangely, I dont see anything similar with any other nations: german, soviet, japanese, etc. use "standard" AI tactics, wingmans dont help their leaders too much. Sometimes they just fly the opposite direction!

Tried 8 vs. 8 Bf109(regular) vs veteran SpitIXeLF25lbs, co alt, 5000m. In the merge I tried to shoot at one of them, no hits. Went right trough the whole pack, on full blast, course no more than 20 degrees of the original, now followed by them Spits. Went on on a shallow climb until Spits about behind me 3-4 km. Turned, tried to set up a shot, missed. Out again, and this time there were some Spits ahead (~30 degrees) and below, so I gradually turned and descended towards them. Tried to get a gunnery solution, but the rapidly banking and turning made shooting impossible without risking to get caught from these Spits behind me. Went out again and could have stopped there and flown home and as a real life pilot probably would have.
But as an online pilot I want KILLS. So I went back in, and spotted some Spits far below me, and though I knew there had to be Spits at near my alt, went for them down there(Bad move#1). Then I tried to get a gunnery solution and turned with the Spit (Bad move #2) -I want KILLS. Shot, missed, and discovered that Spit had some mates, and they were behind me. Went for rolling scissors guns defense, that worked surprisingly well (They AI not beeing able to make the split second high angle shots you present them helps-better since 4.11), and really got one of them in front of me, and damaged that one. Now I was down to about 3k (Spits now can match or exceed my speed), slow and alone with three veteran Spits. Next to no way getting out there alive. Someone really good at scissoring the enemy may have been able to do it -but I didn't.

Only thing I find a bit troublesome with the AI in that particular fight is that they do not use their planes strenghts very well, and do TnB in an 109 vs Spit. And they do not cooperate with you against the enemy.

Similar experiences here:
1. Very little cooperation: wingman with "follow me" doesn't call me when attacked, doesn't warn me when I'm attacked, and doesn't attack when enemy is at my six and in front of his guns;
2. AI does use the vertical quite well, but not zooming out properly to perform a real BnZ tactic;
3. Veteran AI opens fire from 600-500 m, making occassional hits, but wasting ammo;
4. Rookie AI gunners are sometimes able to kill me with one single lmg shot from far.

ok then all this aces m8 who state to be SO brave:

gaunt1, Derda508, IceFire, please post here a track 8vs8 spit/me109 average level whatever year and then show how brave you are. Is simple to say just theoretical WORDS about how to be an ace-player like you all are arguing to be.
I'm waiting.. :rolleyes:

well, I play lot of QBM but maybe I'm not so good even still at this game.

I played moscow winter, 4 american p47Ds vs 4xbf-109E4s + 4xfw190A5s
Americans were ace, Germans were rookie. Altitude Americans at 3000m, Germans at 1000m.

I killed 4 planes in total. My allies killed maybe 1 plane from the Germans which was despicable performance. All American aces were shot down by rookie germans except my plane hehe lol

I tried to drag remaining focke wulfs to high altitudes. Remaining bf109 went home. Although I must say their performance didn't seem much hampered at all, I was trying to fight turn fight fw190 co-alt at 9000m, but they did have pretty good speed still, and turn performance! Stalemate in the end I should say, conga-line of enemies chasing you :-x

Dont even think about a turnfight even with a bomber in a P-47! :) It is absolutely the worst turning fighter plane of the game, even the Fw-190 is able to outturn it easily.

we were flying over 9000m alt though. Absolute service ceiling for fw190 is 11,000m (not enough for sustained turn fighting, keeping it's altitude, in reality, it means plane can hold level flight barely)


I wondered only, if the AI gets unrealistic high altitude power boost regardless of plane which it's flying? Does anybody know about this?

Or maybe I should have climbed even higher LOL, to the aforementioned 11,000m :cool:

Just did a few 8v8 runs against Spit F.Vbs in both the 109F-2 and G-2, 5000m alt. Challenging, yes. BS? Not hugely. I even got fired on quite a few times but made it through with minor battle damage on the G-2 and barely scratched the F-2's paintwork (until I got target fixation and stupidly collided with the second-to-last Spit :rolleyes: )

AI Spits tend to do some odd things like insanely fast barrel rolls, but I've seen far crazier stuff from human players. The seeming inability of the AI to blackout is what irks me most. Veteran and Ace AI do perform some dubious deflection shots at points where I'm pretty sure they shouldn't be able to see you from the cockpit, let alone accurately track you, but that's just my experience and not solid fact.

Friendly AI does need a lot more babysitting command-wise, because the enemy flight leads are instantaneously dishing out orders that you have to take time (and remember) to do. That's where I think people fall into the trap of thinking friendly AI is useless - the AI-led ones are being given orders that you're not thinking to do.

I'd gladly upload a couple of tracks of the fights, but it seems the forum doesn't like me uploading attachments and I can't be arsed recording them and putting them on YouTube. If you whinge enough and I'm bored enough I might ;)

I don't know about that, the LaGG-3RD is pretty awful at doing anything other than burning...then again, beating the jetLaGG at anything is like an adult beating a 4 year old in a running race :(

The AI also suffers at high alts - it's problem is that it's not as gentle on the controls (the last time I did this) and loses height after a while. Just fly very gently keeping speed up and you'll out-turn it, although the most effective way to get behind it is up-n-down yoyo-ing, top turning with a lot of rudder, keep the wings level as possible to maximise lift.

Just as a sidenote: In a G-2 (depending on Spit variant also in a F-2), this is challenging, but you always have one advantage-speed. Allows for getting away with small errors, though blundering will be punished.
Depending on what shots exactly, humans do that too -or have you never shot at an enemy below your line of sight that you expected to be in your crosshairs a moment later?
Split S and some degree of roll to change direction surprises normal and rookies at least sometimes (And the AI does that against you, too!).
Do you know what exactly the AI leaders do command? At least when flying wing to an AI leader they don't tell my much -and little useful. And even if it were so, still is a handicap to the player that has to fly, shoot, and at the same time type out the commands to his flight. And some things are rather odd, my wingman should protect me - and though I often find him trailing the enemy behind me and slowly catching up -and then overtake the enemy to stay in formation with me - and if I command him attack or cover me he is gone not to be seen ever again...(Though I think that since 4.11 I had a few times where my wingman actually did some kind of drag&bag maneuvre together with me)

This abomination is a serious contender for Most Useless.

I will if you do :cool:

You want to know what... I'll bite.

Posted to my SkyDrive: http://sdrv.ms/1bvdY5p

First two are 8 Spitfire F.IX 1942 vs 8 Bf109G-2...everyone is a Veteran.

Third is 8 Spitfire LF.IXe (clipped) +25lb boost vs Bf109K-4...once again everyone is a Veteran.

The first two I take a bit of damage and still manage to score some kills. Spitfires are victorious and I get anywhere between 1.5 to 3 kills on those. With the LF.IXe I turned that into a 4 planes shot by this guy. Got a bit lucky with the one Bf109K-4 who missed me and then I shot him! :) The G-2 are really the more dangerous fighters... the K-4 are less agile and just don't do well in a stand up fight. The AI isn't good enough to really make the most of this aircraft. They are definitely better at the G-2 but this is largely the same in the online world. The Veterans you see there are what I'd call above average but fairly typical in skill level to what I see from veteran IL-2 players. Ace AI are like some of the top players I've seen.

I utilize my wingman when I can although once the fight gets started all bets are off. My poor wingmate did die in the second one... shot to oblivion by a 109G-2 while I was trying to close the gap.

Any questions? :cool:

EDIT: Oh... and I still want to see you do it. Or not.

Nice vids and well flown, Ice :)

But I don´t think it will convince sombody who refuses to be convinced and does not even read what people are writing to him (which nicely supports the point I made about "believers"). In a previous post I openly admitted that I am a bad pilot. I get shot down all the time, I just don´t put the blame on the game or some sinister TD mastermind. I know it is because I am to lazy to do some proper training.
Most probably now you will be accused to cheat evn more than AI does ...

ok m8, you then are an ACE player..congrats..probably you have the lucy to stay many hours of day with your joystick in the hands and you can manage to win even with all those cheats made by uber A.I. created by TD.
But this not solve the matter that people like you are rare, and general average player folks (like me..) continue to be frustrate to see this UBER- CHEAT A.I. (and more and more after every DT paches..). regards.

So, my own test (no track sorry)

8 Bf-109G6 early (Veteran) vs 8 La-5FN (Veteran), 2000m
I deliberately replaced the Spitfire with the La-5, because the soviet fighter is far more dangerous, especially at that altitude, and especially because it has unrealistic, overmodeled FM.

First, some facts:

- Bf-109G6 is ABSOLUTELY no match for a La-5FN, it has far worse flight characteristics in every imaginable aspects, at any altitude.
- Im not a good pilot, mediocre at best.
- I usually fly Yaks and Japanese planes, and sometimes P-51 or Spitfire. (besides bombers)
- I dont have much experience with the Bf-109 (because I hate it)

Result: I survived for about 4-5 minutes. During that time, I even managed one kill, but almost immediately, another Lavochkin (not the wingman of the downed one, he was from the second flight) quicky got in my back. I managed to hold him, primarily with barrel rolls, he exhausted all his ammo supply, while I got only a few hits, without noticeable damage. Unfortunately, a second La-5 shot me down after this. End result: 6-6, two planes returned to base from both flights.

Conclusion: While the chance of survival in the above setup is very low, and AI can cheat with its immunity to G, and with an overmodeled UFO aircraft (La-5FN), the myth that AI kills you with one salvo in a few seconds is BUSTED!

I really like this! It's like scientific research! Good! Because back then, during the 40s, they didn't even have AI to test, even if they had the scientific theory. We now have it all, and the conclusions and practical applications of these little tests are limitless. A pity that .ntrk isn't a "valid file" on this forum, but who cares - as I understand, customized paintschemes are not saved inside the .ntrk file.

Normandy, 1500 hours: The die is cast! 8 RAF Spitfairy LF MkIXc 25lbs race towards 8 Luftwaffe Bf 109 K4s and vice versa. Altitude is set at 5000m, clouds at 2750m. Note that the Spits have 40% fuel, 109s have 60% fuel, but that the Spits have bigger tanks innit! Game version is stock 4.12.1m. I have a customized paintscheme and partially changed sounds for most but not all effects, engines and weapons.
The AI of every plane is set to Ace. Difficulty is full real except for player map icon, which is on. And standard loadouts for all!

I find that the spits are already higher than me before the fight starts. Cheaters. After shooting one suspiciously honest spit down, I dive for safety, because I did see an ugly lump of pixels above and behind me. Forget the science, hello deck. Two unknown planes seem to follow me for a while. I really don't want to find out what they are! They give up their chase eventually. My wheels touch the ground eventually. The mission lasted for about 9 minutes and a half.

Unbiased observations and conclusions after a quick reviewing of the track:
- Bf 109 K4 numbers 1(non-AI), 5, 7 and 8 survived, with #3 losing his engine and making a crash landing. The rest didn't make it.
- All spits are gone. Since the interrogation of the dead/mia Spitfairy AI pilots is impossible, cheating investigations are at a standstill.
- K4s didn't cheat in any way, and thus receive decorations for good sportsmanship. Their impressive accuracy with the Mk108 was because of training.
- K4 pilot #5, AI, is a flight leader, and had apparently the highest kill count.
- Identifying planes in the middle of a combat is harder for humans than the AI, unless something obvious like tracer colour reveals the enemy.
:3 <3 (^^

Thanks :)

No, it probably won't but I decided after my first post that... hey... lets just do this thing and record it. Me doing a 8 v 8 with various fighters is just a normal thing I like to do to keep my flying semi-sharp. I rarely have time to get in any serious time these days but last night I was wired from working late (totally had a second wind) so I did it anyways.

Plus I had fun.

You know at this point I feel like saying "awwwwww" but I won't. :evil: :cool:

I'm not an Ace player. I can point you towards some ace players but they are not me. I'm not bad and I have experience which does count but I would only consider myself well rounded and with some degree of experience. I work full time (sometimes more than full time), own a house, and keep a very busy social schedule. Time for IL-2 is pretty limited these days :)

If you are getting shot down by veteran piloted aircraft in ever battle then its because of one thing: You. That's not to say that you can't improve and do better. Because you can and you will if you practice a bit. Sure it takes time and its a great hobby when you get downtime.

As far as the AI is concerned... the AI veterancy levels are great for both players and for mission builders. When I build campaigns my philosophy is this: Rookie and Normal are your typical pilots with minimal or average amounts of combat experience and typical of your average player. Veteran is what it says... an experienced combat veteran. Ace AI is a gifted pilot... the equivalent of Galland, Kozhedub, Gabreski, Beurling, etc.

The AI is not perfect and to some degree it does cheat because its AI and not a human player. But not in the way that you've stated and more importantly its not impossible to play against.

If you are an average pilot then you should set your QMB up with rookie and normal AI pilots. A veteran pilot should be a challenge if you're still getting started and learning the ropes. And its good that there are challenges because its good to raise the bar and be challenged. Only then can you improve.

If you find the AI pilots to be an issue then I encourage you to spend some time online. You'll see performances that exceed anything that the AI can do.

Also... since you said we should ante up and show you some tracks of how we were doing it. Lets see yours. We'll either see the AI cheating or we might be able to help you improve your technique... if that's what you're interested in.

I love the combat report! :D

IDing planes is a way that the AI definitely cheats. They have to know or not know and its difficult to program them with a degree of uncertainty that a human player would have... also I imagine it would be very expensive on the CPU side of things to have that many routines running all the time.

There is always someone who can be happy with this uber-cheat A.I. , especially fanatic players that not only play il2 1946 but also come here and aren't capable to do criticism. And they are the most part writing here obviously just to lick TD feets just to obtain others further present-paches: they remember me like an adult giving free sweet candits to children,.. and all of them don't mind if this sweet candies are outdated for istance.

I respect the opinon of everyone here about good or bad A.I. in the whole contest introduced by TD, but I can't approve people who won't admit that there are bad features about A.I. -and that are clear like water- just to not hurt daddy that is giving him "free sweets" .

Oh there are problems with the AI but so far your problem with them is that they are too difficult. Which isn't the same argument.

Furthermore you've argued that TD has introduced more cheating with the AI and that is also false. They have added more realism to the AI and there is less cheating going on. Just a few examples include:

1) Now they deflection shoot.
2) Now they can't see through the bottom of their aircraft.
3) Now they are affected by the overheating of their engines and must open their radiators to cool it down.
4) AI turret gunners are less accurate, less prone to first shot hits, and are more affected by G forces.

All introduced by TD. There's probably more that the AI is doing better now than ever before. Very contrary to some of your statements. Furthermore, if the argument is (and you have made it) that you can't shoot down Veteran or Ace AI or that they are too difficult... then that is not a problem with the AI (not specifically). It'd be wise to separate the two issues.

Everything else about candy, children, and foot fetishes is beside the point.

Oh I can do criticism, chum. Just where it's warranted.

Yeah, that's right. I congratulate those who put a massive amount of effort and their free-time into adding new content - FOR FREE, YOU PAY NOTHING -to an old game that would otherwise have died years ago. And yes, funnily enough I believe in carrot based motivation and the expression of appreciation. it's called being a) a grown up and b) polite.

What a steaming pile of horse manure. TDs additions have not only breathed new facets into the game with additional aeroplanes and functionality to improve realism but actively improved user interface with the game from widescreen and TrackIR support. This game has never been so fresh. Sure she's showing her age against contemporaries graphically in some regards but the AI beats any recently released sim, hands down.

In fact the only stale thing round here is your frankly odorous (and onerous) attitude. It stinks.

Ha! Could have fooled me. I suggest you reappraise your comprehension of the word respect. Your attitude shows nothing but contempt for most of the people here, particularly those who dare to slog over and release such 'stale' content.

What really astounds me is that somehow you think this tack, this line of belligerent abusiveness is actually going to accomplish anything? How would you feel if someone came along bad-mouthing something you'd spent months working on for no pay and that you had proffered to them for no financial reward? I suspect you'd tell them were to shove it. Why on earth do you expect any different in return?

Are there areas that could do with improvement with the AI? Sure. A few little niggles: I don't think fighter bombers dive bombing routine is particularly accurate for Allied tactics. Sometimes the G affect on AI seems less pronounced than perhaps it should. I still occasionally see transports or bombers doing barrel rolls in formation. These could all do with work.

Difference is I know that there are certain difficulties, some of them insurmountable in the process of fixing them:

Problem 1 - THERE ARE CONSTRAINTS; the engine is limited to what it can physically process in terms of AI computations, it also 13 years old now and there are limits to what you can ask of it

Problem 2 - AI is only ever a poor analogy to true intelligence even at the highest orders of computing; what the hell do you expect from a 13 year old game engine? Getting it to make mistakes is probably harder to do than to get it to shoot straight!

Problem 3 - to my knowledge there is only one TD member dedicated to working with the AI; he has a family and a day job to contend with. So given that he does any and all work in his free-time you cannot expect immediate resolutions to even obvious faults.

When you combine all 3, you might start to grasp why it that the majority of us here appreciate the hard work he does and are understanding and patient when (or if) issues do arise.

The simple fact is that you suck. You don't like that you suck and you don't have the courage to acknowledge it. Until you do, you won't appraise your flying skills with any sense of objectivity and won't recognise your mistakes; and recognising where you suck is the first step of correcting that behaviour and working out how to improve.

Either that or you bin this game game and go fly War Thunder. I for one won't miss you, and given your attitude to most of the other members, I doubt anyone else will be crying at your departure either.

I'm just glad that the days of the AI constantly climbing in an upward spiral to effortlessly get away are gone ;)

X-Raptor, I don't think anyone's arguing that the AI is flawless like you seem to be implying, but it's certainly getting better, not worse. I decided to reinstall the original a few weeks ago for laughs and it's definitely a different story.

Hehe, atleast I can still kill zekes in my corsair campaign quite normally.

I should say, AI is better nowadays at flying and tactic and technique.

I did have some very ddicey moments vs ki84 and n1k2 in campaign though.
Also sometimes it was very hard, if zeros were co-alt and outnumbered us, sometimes even really badly. It was one of those marine corps corsaier campaigns.

I should try wildcat campaign or p40 campaign if i could download a good one.

Also p38 campaign in 1943 ETO or PTO would be great. But with p38-J

I agree ..

True ...

I agree but some of the other issues can be addressed.. I make all the friendly AI Ave or veteran as I said .. Anything less and they may not behave.. Also often you have to command them frequently .. Attack Fighters.. Target All .. Cover me... etc. Like someone else said it also helps to kind of roll into a head on ..

If the friendlies are set right they also respond very well to calls for help. have also found.. and this may be just a coincidence but it seems to me that when you respond to the A like they are live as well it helps.. I also noticed that they do not steal your kills as readily either.. They will back off if you keep shooting.. or even if you shoulder shoot them..


I have found that one of the best things for using the AI is some sort of Voice Activated Command system like VAC..
Yeah some of that is still true.. but this AI is actually the best ever... The only thing missing from the QMB now is the ability to program individual pilot AI skill levels like you can the individual skins..

Thought so, but I couldn't figure out how to make it work. I see that I need Microsoft Speech, which is unfortunately not included with my non-English (minor language) Office 2010. Anyone could help what to try?

I was hoping this was about the QMB A.I. all ganging up on the only plane that is not A.I.

I set up a few QMB with 26X26 planes, and have reduces it to 16X16, but always the same thing, they all come after me.

I've consistently been caught in the cross fire of several planes, and my wing man is usually flying in formation with them. I've tried everything, from diving right in with the rest of my flight, to orbiting, and waiting for the A.I. to become engaged with each other. It seems that once I enter the furball, every enemy wants me dead. Maybe I'm just paranoid:sad:

And this is with A.I. in rookie mode.

you could always do what I do (I'f im the group leader of all aircraft)

order all flights to circle in the area where they are, then fly towards your teammates. You can order your teammates to loiter in the area where they are, it's probably navigational commands in the tab menu

I would like to see how I would fare against multiple aircraft with realistic flight characteristics maintained even with increased number of advesaries.http://www.einkauvie.com/1.jpghttp://www.einkauvie.com/2.jpghttp://www.einkauvie.com/3.jpghttp://www.einkauvie.com/4.jpghttp://www.einkauvie.com/5.jpg

Let me just say though, the AI is good enough to exploit some of it's advantages and punish player for some mistakes.

I just had a terrible mission in Pacific Corsair campaign in 4.12. Mission was scramble from carrier (actually air start 500m alt)

Enemies were 29 Japanese fighters starting from 3000m alt.

We had 6 Allied planes in total, in the air, all starting alt 500m.

You're gonna have to be hell of an ace to beat that one. :cool:

I shot down only two of them myself, then there was 25 bandits on my tail chasing me LOL.

Not that it matters much, the Allied planes we had 6 vs 29 disadvantage, allies also had aircraft quality disadvantage hellcats and corsairs in this mission.
(1/4 Ki84, 1/4 early N1K2, the rest were mix of Ki43 and Zekes)

Does anyone else get malware blocked alerts here from their AV?
Because if your AV don't detect them....

Yeah, I get some alerts about dodgy URLs. Seems to depend who posted in the thread. Perhaps some new posters have something invisible and dodgy in their signatures. No, just now got it on the CloD forum with only known posters on the page, must be a hack into/onto the forum.

Better but still some standout issues
 

Overall I find 4.12.1 to be a big improvement in terms of evasive maneuvers, nice turns, half rolls, loops etc. Still there is a tendency to do an occasional vertical climb followed by a stall when being chased, which of course usually results in the stalling aircraft being shot down.
There is still the issue of the AI being unable to recognize the need to boom and zoom, for example the Karelian Hawks campaign, the p-36 can run away from the i-153 all day with an altitude advantage, but the AI insists on turn fighting, so your going to lose your whole AI flight once and a while trying to dogfight. I've think i've lost more AI P-36's than Finland even had in the war lol.
The last thing that is improved but still occurs occasionally is AI planes defying physics, pulling 9g's no blacking out, no fatigue, while you're snapping your airframe trying to pull with them, or pulling negative g outside horizontal turns or loops, which would of course be impossible except if we where flying su-31's or something. The AI still posess their "radar" and can tell friend or foe from kilometers away.
I don't know how much more AI tweaking is possible in a 13 year old game engine, but it is better than before

AI friend-foe detection probably does work like that somewhat, as in they would know upon seeing something whether its friend or foe.

Althoufh otherwise AI doesnt react to this kind of data with immediate urgency. Probably its because of formation discipline together with maybe AI skill levels.

Effectively what could happen is that once in dot range under 10km, AI probably does see you but still keeps trucking on their flight path. Happens in campaigns, youd have to be coalt at least, preferrably with alt advantage.

Hehe, feels funny when I was playing wildcat campaign i dove straight into a zeke formation. I picked first two bandits out without much reaction, then my AI buddies started attacking them also. Probably tjere were some rookie zekes though.

Clarification/correction
 

Was swept away with business, hence the black out on my part - interesting to see the various thread postings.

Two clarifications/corrections: I reloaded Win 7 Prof a few weeks ago, and found that the multiple AI combats are just fine.

My original posting comments were based on my combats years ago using my previous XP set up, mostly using 4.07. I mentioned in another post re a serious drop in performance from my previous XP set up to my current W7 computer, and it may be that not only my aircraft but the AI were all overamped, as the AI then were on me like angry hornets, very quick and fast. I had pretty much abandoned fighting against multiples due to the seeming rocket performance of the AI, which was enhanced with multiple AI adversaries. With my W7 reload, all is well..."nevermind", so to speak! The one respondents’ comments [Bearcat, I believe] regarding taking on multiple AI in ACE mode are also duly noted, thank you.

Regarding my statement that the majority of combats were close in dog fighting, I should have specified when the combatants have seen each other... I accept the corrections of those who contended with my posting in this regard – unseen assailants did make up the majority of combat kills. Having conceded my overstatement, no combatant would stay in the combat zone if when encountering an enemy the opposing fighter simply climbed away to set up for b&z – the German pilots often relied on their camouflage to disengage at an opportune time; always better to head home for lunch and rest than play target to an enemy fighter. So again, not realistic in the main with this scenario being the default response in the game, though by the reports I understand that the AI in 4.12 no longer possesses omniscient vision to follow you all the way back to base at high altitude…if this is the case, then eluding such tactics would be relatively easy. But would crossing aircraft having mutually seen each other climb away like this or begin to engage?

Regarding my comment re AI refusing close dogfighting against certain opposing aircraft, my request was that the option might be available to experience dogfights which are not available at present, that did in fact historically occur on many occasions. Just a request. I mentioned in another posting some time ago that perhaps a toggle switch in the set up might offer options as follows: "Dogfight", "B&Z", "Random" As it stands, the option is entirely unavailable at present, and adding this feature would enhance, not degrade the game.


If you review my original posting: you will note that I acknowledged and thanked both the originators and current developers working to improve Il-2 1946. Offering suggestions or constructive criticisms are not attacks against the developers present and past, nor attacks against Ubisoft, nor requests to degrade the game. Such comments are a reveal of certain persons lacking decency and integrity who participate in forums, a plague of our times. There is no possibility of any present developer to correct these types…that will need to wait for another developer.

p3

I'd still doubt that, but at least they did happen on a regular basis.
Yes, the AI that doesn't see all is a blessing, and you can catch them with thier "pants down", and you can run from them and they lose interest after some while, and you can hide in clouds. I do think the AI, especially the less capable ones have a too good situational awareness and once you are spotted it is difficult too attack even rookie AI from blind spots.
Depending on numbers, pilots experience and training, planes and mission of those planes, both flights could have reason to engage or not. If both planes capabilities are close, and both sides pilots knowing that fact, they could try to get the enemy now, when he is still at equal footing. But one can also argue that when the enemy knows of your presence you have given away your greatest possible advantage - and you risk too much when engaging now. And then there are mission constraints e. g. a pilot on CAP does not have the luxury of avoiding the fight.

Yes, I've discussed this before too, events presented in such a way as to demand engagement. Others have posted accurately, as you mentioned as well, regarding not engaging certainly being the best option in many instances; however, the opposite was true as well. Mission constraints, someone in trouble, etc.

What I am proposing is simply to have the opportunity to see how one aircraft would compare in a classic dogfight with another type, and the challenge of using your aircrafts' strengths and your piloting abilities to overcome an adversary. Robert Johnson described coming upon a Spit Mk IV when flying a T-bolt with the new paddle blade props - with an exchanged look and thumbs up sign, the Brit and US pilot began a mock combat, which ended with Johnson gaining the win [established kill position, checkmate] You read such accounts from all sides, seeing how one aircraft maneuvered with another in a close in fight. It is a primal instinct of fighter pilots to want to test their aircraft against a rivals bird.

However, as I related in my original posting, presently a 51' or 47' will not dogfight a 109 or 190. A late war Japanese fighter will not dogfight a Hellcat. An Oscar will not engage a Wildcat. Never. The game presently simulates only one combat option with these match ups, no exceptions: AI flies directly away to begin an endless series of b&z jousting head on passes. Yet combat accounts of dogfights between these aircraft include close in dogfights that lasted sometimes up to 15 minutes or more. It is amazing to me how vigorously and venomously some persons argue and resist this simple truth. The game would be enhanced, not degraded, by the simple addition of close in dogfighting being included as an option for all aircraft.

p3

+1 Pugo3! well described, I agree with you at 100%.. but hey!, you can notice that this forum isn't very friendly for people like you & me.. check this instead where other simmers like us describe and (with reasons) criticize 4.12 A.I. : http://www.mission4today.com/index.p...wtopic&t=17382

..and you will not see any reply by any "ace/teacher" like you can find here in this forum where people only tell you that A.I. 4.12 is all OK(...) and reason is just because you are a shit-player :lol:

You know the AI is still easy, It is different to the previous versions and more aggressive. This is very much what a human rookie pilot would be like.

I find myself having to fly a bit more harder, but nothing spectacular. That I leave for human opponents online.
;)

That's odd, because from 4.11 onwards I've noticed the AI is more averse to playing "keep-away", and they have a few more tricks other than just rolling to throw someone off.

Obviously if they're flying a plane with a speed advantage they'll tend to leg it away from you, but I've seen Fw 190s get down and dirty trying to turnfight Russians on the deck. Point in case:

http://i95.photobucket.com/albums/l1...8-49-35-91.png

That's a Fw 190F tangling at knifepoint with a MiG-3U, both Average AI. The fight went from 5000m to sea level before the 190 finally pulled too hard into a turn and spun in. Speaking of which, while AI spins are a nice inclusion, it tends to only happen with Veteran and Ace AI, while the rookies play it safe. I'd expect the Rookies to spin their aircraft in carelessly sharp turns more often and take longer to recover (or even not at all).

It's odd that you say they begin an endless series of B&Z jousting... and yet my experience directly combats that. You want to see endless B&Z and I encourage you to find some highly disciplined pilots online who will do that. The AI likes to mix it up dogfight style more often than not.

The track files I posted before (conveniently located here: http://sdrv.ms/1bDuTyK ) show them doing the close in fight thing. They do that a lot.

Now... what you suggested with having the ability to give the AI a couple of different flight profiles does make a lot of sense. I can actually see that working well for both fighters and bomber/attack aircraft as it would be nice to specify to the AI that you want dive bomb, strafing attacks, single pass strafing, or level bombing. Similarly being able to tell them to do a close in fight or boom and zoom ...not exclusively but as a preference would be a neat feature. There may be further delineations but it does make a lot of sense. A good and reasonable suggestion!

I (and others) encouraged you to improve your flying skills and were even willing to provide examples of how... I certainly didn't call you a "shit player".

I know, that the initial question was about dogfighting in QMB, but I just had an experience in a campaign, that I want to share.
Presently I am flying two blue campaigns parallel: Desaster at the Frontiers (Europe) with Bf 109 and later Fw 190, and Asia for the Asians (Pacific) with Ki-27 and later Ki-43. I am late in 1941 in both campaigns and it is quite unbelievable that the 109 F2 and the Ki-27 were in the air and fighting at the same time.
But to the point: In the pacific campaing with Ki-27 against I-153 and I-16 you get all the dogfighting that you can wish for. The plane set of both sides is build for this. The Russian I-16 would love to get you to dogfight in your Bf 109 as well, but you would be pretty unwise to do it. So, what kind of fight you get, depends very much on the aircraft you choose. With P-47 vs. Fw 190 it seems pretty unlikely to get a dogfight, with the rice bowls against the Ratas you will have it. And, thanks to the new patches, some of the AI will surprise you even after years of playing: yesterday evening, close to the end of a mission, I encountered a pair of I-16 in my Ki-27. After some wild curving I managed to get behind one of them, tried to get it into that miserable gunsight .. and was shot down by the other one. I watched the track and yes: it really looked as if they did me in with very well coordinated drag and bag tactics. I repeated the mission several times (well, I had to, because I was shot down ...) but whenever I met these two Ratas, they did the same thing, even when I still had some wingmen with me: picking me out as the flight leader, one playing the bait, the other one getting behind me for the kill. And then they tried the same with the rest of my flight. Well, I think that this is VERY impressive for AI behaviour and certainly a most exiting dogfight.

They resist it because it exposes how far the game is from reality. Also the assumption that as the war went on dogfights became rarer is false: In Western Europe, classic Boom and Zoom was the domain of the Me-109s and P-38s, and this disappeared in 1944 as the FW-190A became 70% of the frontline force against equal speed opponents. (Except for the first zoom, the FW-190A was very poor on the vertical)

Just the fact that the armament of most WWII fighters is not centralized, and is pre-set for a definite firing convergence distance, says much about their supposed predilection for Boom and Zoom...

They boom and zoomed against slower opponents, because otherwise vs faster enemies it takes up too much time to gain a proper separation, and by 1944, on the Western Front, Boom and Zoom is increasingly rare as speeds get more equal, especially when the Germans gradually learn not to use the vertical against higher-flying Allies...

That is also why one German officer said "All the Aces sent to me from the Eastern Front got shot down on the Western Front": They had been used to enjoying the higher operating altitudes and comparably better dive and zoom characteristics of their Me-109s vs Russian types (whose trim tail gave it superior dive pull-out performance, even vs the P-51, if correctly trimmed, contrary to the usual lore), and all that had to change against the Allies, especially when using FW-190As...

Also, the idea 70% of kills did not see their opponent before being shot down is complete rubbish to anyone who has read more than a handful of combat accounts...

Gaston

P.S. "Red Fleet" 1943 quotes:

http://www.lonesentry.com/arti...an-combat-fw190.html (http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/t...bat-fw190.html)

Quote: -"The speed of the FW-190 is slightly higher than that of the Messerschmitt; it also has more powerful armament and is more maneuverable in horizontal flight."

-"the FW-190 will inevitably offer turning battle at a minimum speed."

-"By using your foot to hold the plane from falling into a tail spin you can turn the La-5 at an exceedingly low speed, thus keeping the FW from getting on your tail."

-"Coming out of a dive, made from 1,500 meters (4,650 ft) and at an angle of 40 to 45 degrees, the FW-190 falls an extra 200 meters (620 ft)."

-"Throughout the whole engagement with a FW-190, it is necessary to maintain the highest speed possible. The Lavochkin-5 will then have, when necessary, a good vertical maneuver, and consequently, the possibility of getting away from an enemy attack"

-"In fighting the FW-190 our La-5 should force the Germans to fight by using the vertical maneuver."

-"Since the FW-190 is so heavy and does not have a high-altitude engine, pilots do not like to fight in vertical maneuvers."

http://luthier.stormloader.com/SFTacticsIII.htm

"FW-190 will fly at 1,500-2,500 meters and Me-109G at 3,500-4,000 meters. They interact in the following manner:
FW-190 will attempt to close with our fighters hoping to get behind them and attack suddenly. If that maneuver is unsuccessful they will even attack head-on relying on their superb firepower. This will also break up our battle formations to allow Me-109Gs to attack our fighters as well. Me-109G will usually perform boom-n-zoom attacks using superior airspeed after their dive. FW-190 will commit to the fight even if our battle formation is not broken, preferring left turning fights. There has been cases of such turning fights lasting quite a long time, with multiple planes from both sides involved in each engagement."

-Squadron Leader Alan Deere, (Osprey Spit MkV aces 1941-45, Ch. 3, p. 28): "Never had I seen the Hun stay and fight it out as these Focke-Wulf pilots were doing... In Me-109s the Hun tactic had always followed the same pattern- a quick pass and away, sound tactics against Spitfires and their SUPERIOR TURNING CIRCLE. Not so these 190 pilots: They were full of confidence... We lost eight to their one that day..."

Quote from Hurricane pilot John Weir: LINK "A Hurricane was built like a truck, it took a hell of a lot to knock it down. It was very manoeuvrable, much more manoeuvrable than a Spit, so you could, we could usually outturn a Messerschmitt. They'd, if they tried to turn with us they'd usually flip, go in, at least dive and they couldn't. A Spit was a higher wing loading..

The Hurricane was more manoeuvrable than the Spit and, and the Spit was probably, we (Hurricane pilots) could turn one way tighter than the Germans could on a, on a, on a Messerschmitt, but the Focke Wulf could turn the same as we could and, they kept on catching up, you know."

But what do these experienced combat veterans know...

G.

The turn rate of the La-5/7 series is clearly overmodeled ingame. (you can actually turn with an A6M Zero in a La-7!) But with realistic turn rates, it still shouldnt have any problems outturning the Fw. According to NII VVS tests, the worst of the Lavochkins, the basic La-5 had 0.5 seconds advantage over the best Fw, the La-5F had 2, and the La-5FN had 3 seconds.