Cik

if you are talking MP everyone is an idiot who fights on the deck. spend five minutes in a lackadaisical climb and you will have energy on almost everybody. there is nothing that prevents spit from coming down. realistically speaking you should attempt to make most of your kills against fighters who are engaged, or who are unaware of you or both. actually hitting a double superior target with a gun is a real trick, but if you manage it they are hardly bulletproof. P-51 .50 is almost instantaneously lethal if you aim well, doubt it's any different for brits. unlike P-51 spit can actually fight on the deck though. i see them do it. you don't necessarily have to pull out a win- just draggin their energy down is often enough for someone else to pounce them.

dispense pre-emptively at all times. plan your attacks such that you will have flares for every run, or simply accept that you may get blasted making a pass. do a thorough recon of the area prior to making your attacks such that you can account for most of the air defenses, and suppress those first if able. following these two principles, IR missiles will no longer be a significant problem for you.

anecdotal evidence is all well and good, but can you tell us: is the gun supposed to be 5mil is the gun 5 mil in game? if the second one is not true (as a bunch of smart people seem to be) why has ED not corrected this for literal years as it is apparently a one-line change in a lua file? i kill stuff with the gun all the time but it's supposed to be a simulator isn't it? why not correct the gun dispersion if it is wrong and it is easy to do?

i feel like spits actually do a good job. granted, i have never flown one, but they blaze away at low altitude, force the 109s into a lower energy state, then i come down and scoop 'em with my .50s i don't know if i've ever seen one lose a bona fide low alt turning fight either. the problem with 109 as always is vertical potential, but a 6000' foot P-51 fixes that problem for you nicely so.. server would benefit from just having more allies than axis so teamwork could be more of a factor than strict engineering advantages. even still, teamwork evens the score for allies more than axis i feel. as long as you can achieve shooting position, you are lethal enough.

it's demonstrably weaker than it should be though, it's dispersion is roughly 3 times what it should be. vulcan has the same problem. been an issue for nearly a decade now with no fix so anybody's guess why it hasn't been resolved yet (considering it's a one-line change IIRC)

partly it's the aiming AI, but partly it's the fact that a single 5.45 can terminally rape your engine, so if you get 5-15 5.45 round shot at you you can lose both engines, catch fire, lose all your governors, lose all your autopilots, etc. huey and mi-8 both are really fragile. i don't really think the hit locations are even being modeled, or if they are the AI is supernaturally good at aiming and aims directly at those subcomponents with 99% accuracy. any bullet with a TOF of <3 seconds you are going to get roasted, regardless of how big the bullet is it seems.

is it going to have any actual engineering level changes? G-suit, higher boost, different supercharger etc? or just a cockpit retexture?

remember that even the best radars cannot see through a hill

i've started running my engine up for a little while before taking off, and it's ceased seizing. even running WEP for reasonable periods of time (5-10 minutes on/off) it hasn't seized all week in probably ~10 hours of flying -51D. additionally, it feels to me like altitude advantage means way more than throttle. i've just been dogfighting at takeoff (~61" MAP and 3k RPM) which seems a lot more manageable temp-wise when making high yoyo climbs. been having a lot of success recently, sometimes bagging several 109s per sortie. best practice seems like: attack from high angle against unaware target. often can gain victory in single .25-.5 second gunburst (at certain ranges .50 seems like an instant death chainsaw) in if you are co-energy just dive out as it is unwinnable. engine seems quite tameable, i think before it was high oil pressure causing the engine kills (from not warming oil up to 40C) once you do that it behaves like a dream, if you can accept that you are just fated to be a double inferior plane and recognize your limitations.

holy bejesus

in a few of the stock A-10 missions there are some "fluff" infantry units out for a jog. if they try to jog "under" your plane, they will pick your 44,000 lb aircraft and carry it with them, while they slowly strip all of your wings, control surfaces etc off and start them on fire. funny, if a little crazy.

yes, me & buds have noticed that it is incredibly vulnerable- paratrooper AKS can basically kill every single important system with like 5 rounds of 5.45

eh nm, totally works lmao just had to rebind the control because of a control conflict i guess. would explain why my DFM controls stopped working at about the same time..

tilt your radar antenna to face the altitude you expect the targets to be at using the tilt control - remember that your altitude "bracket" (max/min look altitude) is a function of distance from your plane to the cursor. if the target is at 20 miles and 25k ft you will have to make sure the antenna can see 25k at 20 miles to see them successfully. probably the best thing you can do is learn how radars work, which will help you gain a fundamental understanding of why you may see or not see anything that is there in front of you.

ball and chain just never appears with sensor select fwd bomb config is MK82Y - AUTO - NOSE - OFF - RET - 8 - 1 - 200 it used to work, but a few patches ago it stopped. unsure how i could be doing it wrong, it's a single button press IIRC.

so what i'm hearing is that pitch continues to increase with throttle setting (towards max) IE thrust should continue to increase as throttle rises towards 61" MAP, makes sense to me. it does say in the manual that WEP at sea level is useless (i guess that prop pitch is maxed at 61" MAP at ~sea level) is there a rule of thumb as to when 67" MAP becomes useful? how often do you guys use WEP in general?

alright so, i think i understand the most basic principle at work here- the engine has a fuel reservoir - the engine draws it, provides mechanical power which it conveys somehow to the propeller - the propeller which is basically a sideways helicopter blade system yanks the plane through the air by varying the angles of it's airfoils. so, the question: the P-51 seems to have a "chained" engine power/propeller RPM system that loosely increases/decreases together depending on your prop pitch / throttle setting. at 500 ASL~ if you push the throttle past 45" pressure your RPM will climb until it reaches it's max operating speed of 3000 propeller RPM. so, you can continue raising the throttle until 61" (or 67" WEP) the question is then: is there any actual benefit to raising the throttle higher than the throttle setting that allows 3000 RPM and if so, where is the thrust coming from if the propeller is staying at 3000 RPM? is there a prop pitch (and pursuant thrust increase) past 45" / 3000 RPM mark? I've always assumed that running the engine higher produces more thrust (otherwise why takeoff at 61" MAP instead of 40" MAP?) but recently i've begun to wonder if there is any actual benefit. interested in any answers, thanks.

as everyone seems to be ignoring the question in the OP, i will just ask here again: so am i wrong in thinking that A/G mode, master arm on, sensor select forward, nose down to target, TDC depress should yield a correct designation (with no additional prerequisites)? the ball and chain never appears for me regardless of what i do and so AUTO is unusable in currentpatch.

it would be neat to get a more robust handling of ROE in general. being able to tell a missile battery to engage targets in a specific area of a specific side with a specific number of missiles within a specific time window etc. SAMs, ASCMs, TBMs, artillery, etc. could all use some ability to tweak how they behave, and some basic modeling of datalinks that allow them to talk to each other to allocate targets could also be neat.

not for me. can you explain your method?

hey. it used to be that you could press sensor select fwd to designate targets on the ground (more specifically sensor select fwd --> TDC depress) however this no longer seems to work. was it changed or is there some new precondition to designation? i can't find anything on the net about how it's supposed to work now. thx

the real technical answer is unknown to me, but generally speaking you will get two vertical turns before 109 will be at co-advantage. by your third turn he will have advantage, assuming you started from your max speed of ~450 mph and he is at a military/cruise sort of speed.

spitfire and P-51 are roughly on par, they just have different strengths. you can knock down 109s all day if you are conservative and play to your strengths: approach from 4-6k ft above 109 dive to 450-480 mph draw lead shoot kill or no kill zoom turn low repeat at most, twice (unless target is very low energy) dive out and run this assumes you are alone, if you are in pair you can turn with him to drag to low energy and unengaged man can high/low attack at will 109 is good but is not immune to bullets. all you must do is achieve shooting position, then shoot. once is sometimes enough.

better is relative. it's a short range interceptor, it's pretty good at it. against P-51 it has narrow advantage in instantaneous climb, wide advantage in turn performance, probably parity in armament (save perhaps when attacking bombers) it loses out in fuel range and numbers. 109K is aided by generally very low altitude of fights and airquake nature of engagements (few v few where most people fight to the death) it would be useless to anybody but germany IIRC, as it's range is lackluster compared to mustang. but yes, very nimble and dangerous.

the issue has always been that while the jets may be realistic (or, at least, pretty close) the scenarios that are played are incredibly unrealistic. especially in props, numbers make an incredible difference to the outcome of fights. in reality, here's how your average battle in '44 would go for you as hans schmitt: 1. engage P-51 on neutral/favorable terms, go a turn or two, maybe you get him, maybe you don't 2. bounced by unengaged P-51. you may not observe him at any point. he fires at you, gets you, maybe not. 3. bounced by unengaged P-51. you may not observe him at any point. he fires at you, gets you, maybe not. 4. bounced by unengaged P-51. you may not observe him at any point. he fires at you, gets you, maybe not. 5. bounced by unengaged P-51. you may not observe him at any point. he fires at you, gets you, maybe not. 6. you fly home (maybe) 7. later, 100 P-51s strafe your airfield 8. repeat tomorrow if able in few vs few, german planes hold several key advantages, but P-51 is capable, has the range to get to germany, and outnumbers you. it can kill you, and if enough unengaged fighters pounce you, you will statistically be forced to eject and/or die.