yea 90% of the switches are for start-up and switching between combat/cruise mode... in a fight u should already have all the switches set so all u gotta worry about is throttle/pitch and maybe supercharger settings... if ur switching radiator or electrical systems in the middle of a fight then there's something wrong with you... not the game.... in a more realistic situation you can't micro-manage all the systems of your plane to keep it running maximum performance... like i said this is a simulator not an arcade game... so what u'd do is learn how to make it run as best as u can without needing to constantly adjust controls and... even tho u won't be getting the best performance possible out of it... at least ur paying less attention to ur plane than the fight...
and with this game... u'll probly need to constantly adjust things that were pretty much automatic in il2... such as prop pitch... i suspect we'll see a lot of spits with dead engines when the game first comes out, as they didn't have automatic prop pitch
