OutOnTheOP

I don't think so... they seem to turn in and start the fight with me every time. I actually think the AI 109 is the hardest aircraft to fight right now, by a long shot; harder even than human-piloted ones. ...and the AI Mustang is totally useless against it. I've seen AI Kurfurst go like 1v6 against AI Mustangs and just dominate the fight, because the AI Mustangs are too stupid to use good tactics, and just keep climbing and turning, bleeding off all their speed fruitlessly chasing the Kurfurst.

Yes, yes, Hummingbird, we know, you think it should have laser death rays and fly at 0.5 c. We get it. Never mind that you ignore major factors like, oh, I dunno, drag. The fact remains that historical evidence and firsthand reports from both sides *and* modern airshow pilots indicates that the P-51D will indeed out-turn the Bf109 at high speeds. Sorry you don't have a magical win machine. Deal with it.

Ah, maybe there's the difference; I try not to let them get me that slow. I've blown up too many engines doing that :music_whistling:

No, I am not misunderstanding: if it takes 3 hits to kill a bomber, and assumed (and probably overestimated) hit rate was 10%, that means it takes 30 rounds FIRED to get a kill; even assuming that it DOES take only three hits like they say. That said, unless those three hits go precisely into engine 1,2, and 3, or the cockpit, the chances of outright downing a B-17 with only three hits isn't all THAT great.

Ok, I guess even the 190 isn't perfect yet, either. I haven't done exhaustive flight tests with it, I'm judging primarily off rather subjective measurements. IE, "do they regularly climb away from me in fights in a manner that denies me any shot whatsoever", to which the answer is "no"; they may over-climb, but not enough to keep me from killing 'em on the regular. I do ABSOLUTELY know the damage model is better; I've gotten a number of pilot kills and engine kills with extremely short bursts that previously would have left the 190 flying on with nary a care (how frustrating it was, watching tracer flashes hitting the canopy in a high-deflection shot, and having that diamondtanium canopy deflect them all....) Ouch, I wouldn't dare trying to fight at MAX flaps; too much drag. One notch, very occasionally two on the 'Stang.

sooo... it carries an analogue to the Penguin, which the SH-60 Seahawk (the ACTUAL maritime helicopter used by the US, not the Apache) carries. Move along, nothing to see here.

I'd be perfectly happy, as a Mustang player, for more Kurfurst players to take the gun pods... more weight and drag will just make it that much easier for me to get my guns onto them ;) Everything is a trade-off

The 190 certainly seemed over-modelled when it came out, but I think that it's been quietly brought more into line with reality: it originally over-climbed by a LOT (like the 109 is now), had some 200 too many horsepower available, somewhat too low drag, and was much too resistant to damage. Those seem to have been brought more in line with reason, and it now performs as specs and real-world flight testing indicates it should. I think with any just-out-of-beta module, you need to give it a few months before deciding it's totally borked. That said, I expect the fixes to be made QUIETLY, because, as you say, too many people would beech and moan that their pet ride was being "nerfed". But Eagle Dynamics does need to keep things reasonably realistic/ balanced (yes, you can do both at the same time!), or else the ALLIED players will walk away and find something else to play.

An addition: I would ask that people not forget all the "soft stat" advantages the 'Stang has, too: better visibility (especially over the nose, critical for deflection shooting), tail warning radar (saved my bacon tons of times), lead-computing sight, high-velocity and flat-trajectory bullets (easier to get hits on maneuvering targets), more stable as a gun platform, full trim suite for pitch/roll/yaw (allows you to spend more attention on fighting the fight, less on keeping the airplane in the air; also makes for higher speeds more easily due to aerodynamic efficiency that's harder to obtain without the trim), better A2G options, easier takeoff and landing stability (lord knows how many players I've seen sign out and back in to "erase" their 3-straight takeoff wreck score-deficit in the Bf109). There's a lot more to a fighter than just turn rate and engine power, and in a lot of those "soft" features that are easily overlooked, I think the Mustang is significantly better than the Kurfurst or Dora. All in all, I actually think the Mustang is the better fighter all-around, even if it IS impossible to catch a Kurfurst player that wants to deny you a shot. That said, I'm basing this on my experience flying the Mustang against the Kurfurst online, where I have (with Mustang) had little to no difficulty racking kills up against human-flown Bf109s.... and I think they've only killed me once (and that wasn't much of a kill; I disengaged and got halfway home, then the engine died, so I had to ditch). How much of that is because the Bf109 players I've flown against have been inexperienced, I don't know. Perhaps if I put some more time on the other side of the fight (flying the Bf109 against the Mustang), I might change my mind. I *will* say that the AI-flown Kurfurst is the hardest opponent that I've flown against. Human-flown, it's not so bad, but the AI one is a freakin' TIE fighter.

Actually, I think that 150 grade would be BETTER than just parity, because not only would it be performance-leveling, and not only would it be historically accurate, but it would actually have the ideal game balance: that is to say, it would allow the Mustang to out-perform the Kurfurst... but only for a very short period, due to overheating. So the Mustang would be able to use the "turbo button" to catch the Kurfurst, but would have a limited window to do so; whereas the Kurfurst would continue to have the advantage if it can prolong the fight. Right now, the Kurfurst holds a pretty dominant acceleration/ climb rate advantage in both short- and long-duration fights. It would make them competitive, but force different tactics on each aircraft. That makes good game balance, and FUN.

Considering that this is a tired re-hash of some exact arguments that have been made before, I'm sure you won't get many replies, but I do have to ask why you would compare a Bf109K4 with 296 kg of fuel against a P-51D with 514 kg of fuel. That 218 kg makes a difference. In-game, it matches perfectly with what those pilots were quoted (and, for that matter, with the equations you posted): at slow speeds, the Bf109K4 in DCS easily beats the Mustang in both turn rate and turn radius, and can climb and accelerate away at will (in fact, it seems to over-climb by a not-insignificant amount right now). On the flip side, at higher speeds (over 250mph indicated; the stick stiffening happened WAY before 350mph), the Mustang wins because the cleaner airframe and lower alpha/ more drag-efficient wing planform means it burns less energy on turns (and also doesn't have ridiculously high stick forces limiting it... though even the Mustang had a pretty stiff stick at high speed). Yes, the Mustang has some flap tricks that can bring it around the circle to get a shot in a slow speed fight, but it can't do it for long without blowing up it's engine. Really, it's a pretty fair fight. The Mustang wants to stay fast (and preferably above 18,000), the Kurfurst wants to drag the fight low and slow. Each can outperform the other in different regimes.

Ok, so... your entire loadout to kill one larger aircraft (also, there are videos out there of B-17G flying on as if nothing happened after taking 8-15 30mm hits- you can COUNT them hitting. They just didn't hit anything important as far as remaining airborne. There are B-17s that had 88mm detonate INSIDE the fuselage that made it home.) Don't put too much faith in the "Luftwaffe says 2-3 hits should do it" studies.

In order to out-turn your Mustang, they have to go VERY high alpha (by WW2 standards). This means they blow a TON of energy. If the Bf109 goes for a hard flat turn and you're offensive, go high yo-yo. The one part that can be frustrating is getting your nose far enough around to get a shot onto the Bf109. At slow speeds, he will indeed out-turn you... until you drop a notch of flaps. At that point, you will easily pull lead. You just can't do it for long, because tight turns+draggy flaps+high power setting= blown engine. Stay at a higher speed than him, turn outside his circle (beat his radius with your rate), and when you see the opportunity to get a shot in, drop that notch of flaps for the extra little bit it takes to get the guns on him. I haven't had a bit of trouble killing Bf109s multiplayer so far. Granted, I think that's because noobs see the Bf109 as some kind of super-plane, and expect it's power and turn rate to win the fight for them, rather than employing sound tactics. It just seems there are a disproportionate number of noobs on the Kurfurst online. They do a lot of flat, slow luftburys, and that's easy to defeat. Now, what CAN be frustrating is a good Bf109 player that just opens up the throttle and runs/climbs away every time you start to get a semi-advantageous position. In that case, I usually find the fight ends up a draw: they climb away and try to BnZ; I put too much angle on as they dive in for them to get a shot off (particularly hard for them with the poor visibility, poor gunsight, and lousy 30mm ballistics). They overshoot, climb away as I turn in to get a shot on them... wash, rinse and repeat. Normally this ends up a stalemate until one of us goes bingo and turns for home (protip: this is almost never the Mustang!)

Or perhaps, as they are modular units, the FCR was removed because the US Army found that a radar incapable of detecting and identifying dismounted personnel was somewhat less than useful in a counterinsurgency, while additional loiter time (or ordnance) that could be carried instead *was* useful. I mean, typical loadout is 19 FFAR and 2 Hellfire in OIF/ OEF. It's not that the US ones can't carry more, it's that it cuts into their battlefield loiter. To the best of my knowledge, in stateside units, it's pretty common to have 3 radar-less Longbow led by one with radar... they just found they don't NEED any more radars than that. Why carry a radar you don't need, if it hurts loiter time that you *do* need?

LOL. Ok. Whatever, dude.

I could have sworn Paul Allen (of Microsoft) has a flying-condition D-13 in Everett, WA. To the best of my knowledge, it has BEEN flown (to prove it can), but is not STILL flown (because it's too rare to risk destroying)

Generally agree, with the caveat that (from what I've seen so far) the Mustang CAN turn with the 109 in many circumstances: that is to say that the 109 bleeds a LOT of energy in hard turns, resulting in a slow, sharp turn that the Mustang cannot follow in clean configuration. However, with one notch of flaps, the Mustang will hold that turn (and even pull lead). The problem is that doing so requires the Mustang to ALSO hold very high engine settings, and slow speed+ high power setting= roasted engine. You can really only use the flaps trick to stay with a 109 for 15-20 seconds, so you should reserve it for that "I just need to pull a BIT more lead to get the shot" moments. If dropping flaps won't give you an immediate shot, I'd avoid it; the 109 will recover the lost energy more easily than the Mustang will.

You're correct, he should have. Even the use of plain (American) English "ess eh" phonetic letters is a breach of radio procedure; they are easily misunderstood with f and j or k, respectively. Hence "sierra alpha". But yes, "guideline" is correct Still, nowhere do I hear them say anything about a "Dvina". Do you?

Wait... you got the gauges to export?!?

Close; I believe "buk" is pronounced "gadfly" in English. NATO has standard reporting names for a reason.

That would do it all right. It's pretty slow, takes like 10-15 seconds to fully open. Be advised, leaving the radiator doors hanging open comes with a not insignificant drag penalty. Personally, I only ever use manual open when I can see the temperatures starting to rise out of the green (generally this means I have put on a rapid increase of power settings, or rapid decrease of airspeed). I hold it only long enough that i can see the temperatures gauge start to drop back down, then *immediately* set it back to auto. Auto works fine, it's just that it didn't respond to large, sudden changes fast enough. 90+% of the time, it's best to leave it on auto. Oh, and the oil radiator functions in exactly the same manner as the coolant radiator. I believe it also requires about ten seconds. I don't have access to the game at the moment, but you could always just load up a mission, go to external view, and count how many seconds it takes for the doors to stop moving. They *do* move on the external model, after all.

Just keep your speed up. The mustang turns better than the Dora at speed, and perhaps more importantly, it seems to burn less speed when making turns at high airspeed. If you get below about 230 mph, the mustang starts to wallow, and under 250 you'll have cooling issues at combat power settings. Not really sure what advice to give vs the Kurfurst; I have been out of country since out released; haven't played against it yet.

Funny that you should mention, because the same tired arguments that keep coming up about why the A-10 should be retained, are based around the same strengths as the Hs129, while the A-10 also shares most of its weaknesses. That is to say that the Hs129 was a *dedicated* CAS aircraft designed around survivability, firepower (750mm tank cannon in some variants) and loiter time, but suffered from underpowered engines, poor high speed performance, and bad SA (resulting from poor cockpit layout in Hs129, vice lack of sensors in A-10). As most of us know, as it happened, the Hs129 (and Stuka, another slow dedicated CAS bird) proved to be too vulnerable to both interception and ground fire, and the real stars of CAS in the war were designed as fighters. For the last time, CAS means delivering ordnance with precision near friendly forces in contact. That does NOT require the delivering aircraft to bee either low OR slow. Just like field artillery evolved from direct fire over open sights in WW1 to indirect fire using spotters in WW2 as mapping, radio, and ballistics technology advanced, new technologies (mainly GPS and sensors) allow CAS to be performed in new ways without losing effectiveness.

Funny that you should mention, because the same tired arguments that keep coming up about why the A-10 should be retained, are based around the same strengths as the Hs129, while the A-10 also shares most of its weaknesses. That is to say that the Hs129 was a *dedicated* CAS aircraft designed around survivability, firepower (75mm tank cannon in some variants) and loiter time, but suffered from underpowered engines, poor high speed performance, and bad SA (resulting from poor cockpit layout in Hs129, vice lack of sensors in A-10). As most of us know, as it happened, the Hs129 (and Stuka, another slow dedicated CAS bird) proved to be too vulnerable to both interception and ground fire, and the real stars of CAS in the war were designed as fighters. For the last time, CAS means delivering ordnance with precision near friendly forces in contact. That does NOT require the delivering aircraft to bee either low OR slow. Just like field artillery evolved from direct fire over open sights in WW1 to indirect fire using spotters in WW2 as mapping, radio, and ballistics technology advanced, new technologies (mainly GPS and sensors) allow CAS to be performed in new ways without losing effectiveness.

I would prefer the A-26 Invader, based on the depicted timeline (it is contemporary to the Dora and Kurfurst/Mustang, and the Sabre, *and* the Phantom), high performance, vast array of mission profile (to include night fighter), and single pilot operation. As it is not an option, I voted A-20, which is functionally similar, but obviously much worse performing