Gunnery and Damage
Hi All,
This is my first posting so it may be a little wordy as there are a couple of points that I would like to comment on and a couple of things that in my opinion need fixing in any forthcoming patch.
I completely agree with the forum complaints about the speed of the opponents. Generally the opponents (unless they slow down in a turn) are almost impossible to catch. Even when you do manage to get close enough to damage their engine, so that they are belching copious amounts of black smoke, they still miraculously manage to out-accelerate and out-distance your own completely undamaged P51.
When when you do eventually catch an adversary the damage inflicted by the six .50 cal machine guns is minimal and not at all realistic. It seems that only the bullets that hit precisely where the pipper is situated cause any damage, making it a long and laborious process to shoot down an opponent. This renders lead shooting pretty much ineffective as the plane fails to make contact with the cone of bullets ahead of it These bullets mysteriously seem to scatter anywhere and everywhere except on the target. In reality (as any number of WWII Gun-cam videos on Youtube and elsewhere verify) the six - nota bene: six! - .50 cal machine guns produced a devastating cone of fire. Any target (air or ground) caught in such a cone for just a matter of seconds was severely damaged. According to WWII pilot interviews, a two or three second burst was enough to bring down most fighter aircraft.
Although this is an excellent sim, the above failings make it extremely frustrating to fly.
One other slightly off topic point I would like to make while I am at it. I love the authenticity of the start-up and take off procedures - best P51 start-up out there. But the behaviour during landing leaves much to be desired in my humble opinion. The plane seems to lack 'weight' as it lands. It floats around like a WWI bi-plane - although landings in Rise of Flight are much more solid and easier to control. If you come in slightly fast and the P51 bounces on the runway it soars up behaving more like a glider than a fighter aircraft. I have tried landing both with flaps and without flaps, to try and make the plane adhere to the ground more, but no matter what flap settings I use it still floats like a paper plane - even when I fly the approach veeery slowly. Any tips would be appreciated. Or a fix in the patch.
Very much looking forward to this patch for what is a very fine but sadly often frustrating sim. A final question: will Steam install the patch automatically?
