What am i doing wrong??

[LFL-EightyPLUS]

Hi, ive spend quite some hours on IL-2 BOS and IL-2 CoD and looking at my dogfight history its pretty much all the same.

Fying a BF109, the battle always ends up in a turning fight with the enemy out turning me, and me stalling. If i try to climb out, he aligns behind me and kills me.

If i dive, provided i got the alt, he alignes and kills me...

Flying hours to find an enemy only to be shot down again and again is getting pretty old now. Anybody got any advice or tips??

Ive watched all of Requims video, but its not helping me.

 

Please?? 

[Finkeren]

First off: There isn't an easy fix that will suddenly make you an ace and win every fight against the AI. It takes experience and literally hundreds of flight hours to get really proficient in this sim. No easy way around practice, practice, practice.

 

That being said, there are a few things you can do to make your life easier, while you improve your flying skills:

 

1. The fact that you stall out a lot in the Bf 109, which is the plane in the entire sim that's least prone to accelerated stalls, tells me, that you're pulling much too hard on the stick. You should practice "easing" into every maneuver, slowly applying more pressure to the stick until you reach the "soft spot" where you're getting optimal turn performance without pressing the plane too hard, don't ever just yank the stick around, even if you're panicked and he's right behind you. After a while of practicing easing into maneuvers, you'll be able to hit the soft spot almost instantly and no slower than yanking the stick.

 

2. Watch your speed. While your plane achieves the smallest turn radius at slow speed, it actually as a higher turn rate at higher speeds (often between 3 - 400 kph). Keep your speed as high as possible in most situations, and if you find your speed dropping towards the 250s or below, you need to get out of the turn and regain speed.

 

3. Everything is an energy game. At any given point your plane possesses a certain amount of energy. In simplistic terms, this energy comes in two forms: Speed and altitude. The pilot with the most amount of energy is able to act more freely and can do more things than his opponent and can therefore dictate the fight and will often either come out the winner or at least be able to escape. After take off as your plane gains air speed and/or altitude, it builds up a reserve of energy. This energy can be traded between its two forms: You can climb, which gives you a lower speed but greater altitude, thus you exchange speed for altitude, and conversely you can dive and exchange altitude for speed. You can also spend energy by performing maneuvers. every maneuver you perform drains energy from your plane - and a sharp turn or a zoom climb drains more than a steady (sustained) turn or a shallow climb - and this energy can then be regained by flying straight for a while and letting the engine rebuild the plane's momentum. You have to learn to play this energy game to know, when to perform maneuvers and when to regain lost energy, but first you need to learn to think in terms of the energy battle. Try training to stay "on top" of the fight, meaning you have the highest energy (often that literally means being above your opponent) Do not concentrate on shooting your opponent down. Lucky for you, you've started out flying the Bf 109, which is the best fighter at playing the energy game thanks to its powerful engine (which lets you regain speed fast) and awesome climb rate (which lets you gain altitude fast) In a dogfight, climb rate can be more important than both speed and turn rate. If your plane climbs much faster than your opponents, you can just climb "on top" of him and make one diving attack after another, and he can't touch you. This is called "Boom And Zoom (often abbreviated BnZ) and while it's only one of the ways the 109 can fight, I think it'd be a good thing for you to practice.

 

4. Put survival first. When fighting focus only on keeping yourself and your plane intact, just as you would in real life. Do not focus on shooting down your opponent, and attack him only when you feel safe in doing so. Treat every mission, where you survive and land your plane safely as a huge victory and every mission, where you die or bail out as a massive failure, even if you shot down 5 or 6 enemies.

 

5. Practice, practice practice. Flying a long way just to get shot down in a minute every single time does get old. I suggest you forget about doing missions or playing online just for now (trust me: Online you'll get torn to pieces. I get torn to pieces myself on a regular basis, and I've been flying this sim since the alpha) Instead use the quick mission builder (QMB) to set up fights against a single AI opponent, fast and easy. Don't feel bad about giving yourself a massive advantage over your opponent to begin with (Set yourself up in a Bf 109G2 against an AI opponent in a P-40 and give yourself 500m altitude advantage) That way you can fly 5 or 6 practice fights in the time it'd take you to complete one mission. Do that a couple hundred times (yes, I mean that number seriously) while remembering the energy game and focusing only on survival. I promise you, you'll see the effect.

 

6. Remember to have fun. Practice flights can be surprisingly fun, especially since you don't have to fly a long way to find your opponent.

Edited September 25, 2016 by Finkeren

[ShamrockOneFive]

 

Hi, ive spend quite some hours on IL-2 BOS and IL-2 CoD and looking at my dogfight history its pretty much all the same.

Fying a BF109, the battle always ends up in a turning fight with the enemy out turning me, and me stalling. If i try to climb out, he aligns behind me and kills me.

If i dive, provided i got the alt, he alignes and kills me...

Flying hours to find an enemy only to be shot down again and again is getting pretty old now. Anybody got any advice or tips??

Ive watched all of Requims video, but its not helping me.

 

Please?? 

 

 

Well it takes time and practice to learn air combat. The Bf109 is good in a turn but its deceptively good because after one or two complete turns you should be at a disadvantage against most of the aircraft you'll be fighting against. No more than 90 degree turns at a time in the Bf109. In a 109 you should be fighting more vertically with diving passes on your target and then zoom away to reposition for another attack. Forget everything you know about "dog fighting" that you see in movies - German fighters and the pilots that flew them tended to operate as hunters more than fighters. They would select a target, make a killing blow, and fly away and go hunting for the next target.

 

Climbing away from your enemy is typically more of a speed to angle thing than an angle to speed thing. If you're pointing your nose high hoping to get away... Well you're just wasting energy and making yourself an easy target. Climb slowly, dive away before they are right on your six, and allow a lot more time for evading your enemies than you are now. If the enemy is right on your six and in firing position - that isn't the time to be saying "Oh, I'll just dive away." By then its already too late.

 

Also... try and fly with friends/wingmates/other players. It makes a huge difference.

[6./ZG26_Emil]

Don't turn in the 1p9. Learn to spiral climb. You need to extend flat to give yourself some room then go in to a gentle left hand climb which then progressively becomes tighter once you are above him. Someone should be able.to find a video to demonstrate this or Google. In the 109 you want to spend every oportunity to climb. I don't have my pc at the moment so sorry I can't help.

[LFL-EightyPLUS]

Wow! thanks for all the advice guys! 

 

You actually made me enjoy the game again

Ill try some of the tactics! especially point 4 on the first post is something i should focus more on.

 

Thanks again!
 

[-TBC-AeroAce]

I would say do lots of qmb flights + normal server + duel server as these will let u rack up xp with out flying around for hours between combat. Do this for q couple of weeks, months ... Then try move on to more advanced stuff

[Wulf]

Some good advice here.  Finkeren's comments are particularly useful.

 

As others have noted, the online world is particularly hazardous.  Even allowing for a good amount of single player practice you will still find online play entirely brutal and unforgiving.

 

So, as Finkeren suggested, just focus on remaining alive to start with.  Maybe the best way to do that (in a 109) is to gain altitude well away from likely combat zones.  Once you're high enough you can then scout those areas where the enemy are likely to be found, typically around targets - both yours and theirs.  You need to be very selective when choosing enemy aircraft to attack.  Ideally you want lone targets at medium altitudes.  This will improve your chances of accurate identification while at the same time increasing your chances of successfully regaining a (relatively) safe altitude after an attacking dive. Remember, as you regain altitude you progressively lose speed and, in so doing, increase your own vulnerability to attack.  Also, the lower you go the greater the chances that you will become a target for someone else.  So, having had a very hard look around to make sure you aren't being stalked by an unseen enemy,  dive on your target, shoot and then climb back to altitude.  Don't attempt to follow your target into a defensive turn; you'll be going too fast to do that effectively and in the process you'll just burn-off your energy.  If the target aircraft turns to avoid you, just climb again and re-assess your options for another attack.  And remember, your attack may have attracted the unwanted attention of other, unseen enemy aircraft.  So take care before re-engaging your target.   If the situation looks at all dodgy, just fly away and look for another, hopefully, unsuspecting target.  And remember,the longer you take to dispatch your target the greater are the chances that you will become a target.