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.
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)