Scrim

I think people are more tired of ED's complete lack of making the AI behave like humans instead of cyborgs who don't know the meaning of the word "mistake" than they are at the WIP MiG-15.

Some things I've picked up: If things get uncomfortable, the MiG-15 can climb. The Sabre however, she can leg it, especially if you take the chance when the MiG is climbing and is slow and not on your tail. Yes, the MiG can accelerate quicker, but the key thing is that when you get to around 500 knots, the MiG is not far from the point where he has to break off, as he will lose control of his plane at speeds where the Sabre pilot has no issue maintaining control. Keep your nose slightly down, and firewall the throttle, and the MiG won't stand a chance at catching up. That is a great way IMO to sort of "restart" the fight, as it allows you to gain speed and height. When you turn back into him after he's broken off, don't pull the stick into the seat, as this will just bleed off speed that you might not be able to recover, especially if the MiG catches on and throws himself straight at you, as the closure speed will be too high for you to regain the speed. Just pull the stick back slightly, and you'll have loads of power left when you jump back into the fight. This can enable you to climb after him if he resorts to climbing quickly. Reduce the MiG's fuel load. In an attempt to make the MiG last shorter, as it IRL has less fuel and shorter range than the Sabre, I put it down to 80%. The MiG still didn't have a even remotely realistic endurance when it came to fuel, as he still flew along merrily back to his airfield, after hounding me back to mine as I had a flame-out landing. However, the lighter weight of the MiG did seem to entice the AI into turning more with me, instead of just relying on climbs as it's only combat maneuver. This did allow me to finally land a few hits, to the extent that I could see a gas trail from him before I had to land.

Is a dev going to bother commenting on this? I gotta be honest, especially with the advent of the Sabre, this is just getting more and more important. Even if the AI hadn't been übermensch in MiG-15s, dogfighting them still wouldn't have been the least fun. I was maybe 800m away from him at times, and I could not for the world see him. The only alternative is to use labels. Either the default ones, or the modded black dots, but even with those you still can't really see him well, and you definitely can't see which direction he's traveling. There were many times when I thought I could sweep down on him, only to too late discover that he was actually pulling up, and not flying level. I mean seriously ED, you've actually gone head first into a WW2 project. How on Earth do you think people will be even slightly attracted to it? It's dogfighting, not BVR. If you can't even see planes that are close to you, how is it going to be even remotely possible to have people enjoy this?

Sorry, the F didn't have one. Would've been neat though.

I have more of an issue with how I needed almost 200 hits to take down the MiG-15 when I put it on the same side to test. But WIP, as we all know.

Indeed. I'm going to try pulling more Gs to see if I can sort out how much is needed for AN-M64s to go over the shoulder. I have started pickling a tad later now, just when I've started the turn. Otherwise you travel quite a bit from the spot you want to hit before you start pulling Gs. It doesn't feel like a long delay, but when you're doing 500 knots and throwing iron bombs instead of nuclear bombs, there's more of a difference.

I ejected the canopy on the runway, but when I repaired the Sabre no new canopy was added.

You have to put the rocket switch in the middle position (the one under the red cover on the armament panel). For some reason it's set to fire when you do a hot start. Top = 1 rocket Middle = Safe Down = Auto rockets

Yeah, horribly inaccurate. LABS is really just an improvement over not having LABS :P Biggest issue I've found with it is that even pulling a bit more than 4G doesn't seem to be enough for the bombs to go all the way "over the shoulder" so to speak, so I'm starting to wonder if this has to do with if more than 4Gs should be pulled in the Sabre, or if it's just a matter of the iron bombs having a different trajectory than nuclear weapons. Has anyone figured out if the LABS in the Sabre can be used for other deliveries than over the shoulder? I know it could in other planes, but I can't find the same sort of instrument to set it up for anything else than over the shoulder deliveries.

It doesn't make it static, but it's supposed to. The word "fixed" is even in that part of the manual.

Electrical caging is placebo right now. Even the brief manual we have now clearly states the electrical caging will make the pipper static, like in all other modes. But in bomb mode, it doesn't. Caging in bomb mode is currently broken. And as made clear by real manuals, the red light indicates nothing else than when a bomb has been released. In this case it will shine constantly. The red light flickering prior to a drop is nothing else than the radar detecting ground clutter, and irrelevant to a bomb drop.

Well, not theoretically. Practically however, you could always fly at just above stall speed around some hostile HMGs... Note: This method leads to a hard to predict volume of fuel dumping, nor can it be shut off until at least one fuel tank is completely drained.

That. It felt a bit like the F-105 vs the MiG-17, but reversed countries. Granted, the -21 is way better at turning than the Thud, but not as good as the Sabre. However, the sheer force that engine is packing makes it very easy for him to just take off. The only chance I really had was jumping him and landing hits before he could react, or if he'd been crazy enough to follow me in turning.

Exactly. The issue I'm having is that every time the -15 can't keep up in a turn, or even just get on my tail, it reverts to an incredibly sudden high climb that is impossible to keep up with for even a fraction of the manoeuvre.

^That. As good a FAC aircraft it was, it was just as good if not better as a COIN/CAS plane, which it was built as. Then things obviously changed when the USAF panicked at every other branch buying them after they'd said no, especially fearing it would lead to an Army airforce again.

That's because caging doesn't work in bomb mode. The manual states that the pipper is fixed when caged in bomb mode (just like in any other mode) but it's plain to see that it still moves about.

Yeah, that part makes no mention of the red light at all. It does confirm my suspicion that caging the sight doesn't work in bomb mode though, as it clearly states the pipper should be fixed when it is caged, which it currently is not.

Don't know. I've tried that way, but it seems dodgy. I've never read of real Huey pilots doing it, not even in Chickenhawk when they had to take off with gross overloads. The only thing I've ever heard of for coping with overloaded takeoffs is to do running takeoffs, even if that entailed dragging the skids in the dirt for long distances.

Yeah. I love this plane, but for me, it took second seat to the MiG-21. But when I started flying it, dang!

Shouldn't. I mean, that's why we're supposed to cage the sight before we can fly stable on the target. Though I suppose that might be coming back to my original point in this thread, that caging doesn't work for bombing. I don't understand why the pipper wouldn't stop moving when you electronically cage the sight for bombing, when it stops in all other cases.

I thought it was just me, but maybe not. Yeah, I never got an automatic release with an inverted dive on the target.

I don't think so. One of the few automatic releases I've done so far was flying NOE, which resulted in, eh, a less than 1 winged recovery. I'm struggling to find any virtue in using automatic release, or even the A4 gunsight calculating a release point. Using the manual piper depression has resulted in bomb drops at least as accurate as those the A4 sight calculates.

With the exception of turning below 30,000 feet. Though I've never bagged a -15, out turning it works perfectly.

When I uncage the sight, small deviations with the piper from the target cancels the launch.

Still having issues getting release. I've had a few now, but the release parameters seem to be so incredibly narrow that you're better of using manual release. The demands for a release in automatic doesn't really seem to be on level with any added precision compared to manual release.