Ilyushin Advice

[unlikely_spider]

I want to play the Sea Dragons campaign. I've never flown the Il-2 before though, or really anything other than fighters. How do you typically deal with the rear gunner during single-player? Let him do his thing, or switch back and forth?

Also, are there many differences between the 1943 mod and the others in the game? It's tough to find videos on this plane on Youtube because the name is the same as the game and you just get everything pertaining to the series in the results

 

Any other advice or tutorials on this plane are welcome!

[No105_Swoose]

My personal preference is to let the AI tail gunner operate his position and not switch back and forth.  My other personal preference is to instruct the tail gunner to engage targets at short distances (~ + F3 + F1 + F1).  It seems to help for accuracy and not wasting limited ammo.

[unlikely_spider]

Okay, I just flew a mission and dropped all my bombs on some artillery. But it seems that none of them detonated.

I did a low-level dive, then released as soon as they passed under my reticule one-by-one.

[TP_Silk]

Typically when performing a ground attack you will want something like a 3 second delay (for static targets at least) and to drop from sufficient altitude to allow the bombs to arm much like when skip bombing ships.

[-SF-Disarray]

The AI are, broadly speaking, competent gunners. They will pull off some fantastic high G deflection shots from time to time, but on balance a human player can out perform them with a little practice. That is why I tend to let the AI do my gunning for me, only switching places when I feel like having a bit of fun on the gun or feel that the AI won't get me home for some reason. Controlling their engagement range is a good idea, typically limiting them to mid to close range is best as at long range they tend to shoot a lot and miss most of the time.

 

As for the planes, the 41 and 42 are fairly similar. the 41 is lighter and can carry marginally less armament. Really the only thing it lacks in the ability to mount 37 mm cannon. The 42 has better armor protection for the pilot and a gunner option, it can also mount the aforementioned cannon. These changes, along with no significant change to the engine make the 42 noticeably slower; largely this is down to the increased mass of the plane and the violence done to the aerodynamic profile when they cut the gunner's hole into the plane. The 43 has several changes, most of them improvements. First and foremost is the gunner's position. In the 43 they actually designed the plane to have one from the outset so there is less aerodynamic loss. It also mounts a 12.7 mm MG in place of the 7.62 tail gun on the 42; I don't play with the gun all that much but I feel the 43's gun has a better field of fire as well. The 43 also mounts an improved 37 mm cannon with a faster fire rate and better terminal ballistics, it still hits like a truck too. You also get PTAB bomblets with the 43, so that's cool. The engine has been upgraded but the weight has also increased marginally so you don't see massive improvements in speed or acceleration. The gun sight on the 43 is one of it's more obvious changes and one I'm not sure I like, all told. It can be very useful, I'm given to understand, in deploying PTAB's and other bombs in a more level drop, but I tend to fling rockets at things in IL-2's most of the time myself. There is documentation on how the gun sight is to be used.

 

For your bomb problem, it is an easy fix. You are running into a Soviet bomb safety feature. The bombs' fuses won't arm immediately when released from the plane. They have a little spinner on them that has to rotate some fixed number of times before the bomb will go live. This is to prevent the bomb from detonating prematurely or a green pilot blowing himself up by dropping the bombs from too low. To avoid this drop your bombs in such a way that they have 4 or 5 seconds of flight time after drop. Typically this means dropping from above 200 m in a diving attack or making a relatively level attack at high speed so the bomb can fly a little before hitting anything. This timer has nothing to do with the bomb fuse delay that you can set before the mission. The bomb fuse delay timer will only tick down if the safety timer ticks down first.

[unlikely_spider]

Disarray, thanks much for that detail!

 

I tried again and released bombs at higher altitudes and they detonated. Good information, all!

[Royal_Flight]

Alternatively, set the fuse to five seconds and they arm after hitting the ground from any altitude.

Only issue comes in hitting moving targets, where there's a risk they'll drive out of the way. 

 

I also have a feeling that the AI gunner can see through the fuselage; a lot of the time they pick up the gun long before anything is visible and aim at a point that gives them a perfect snapshot as soon as an enemy comes into view.

You can have fun with the gunner position yourself but usually the AI has the edge due to being able to set up mad trick shots like this.

But definitely set them to only engage at short range, otherwise they'll spray wildly at dots floating through the 10k bubble on a wild hail-Mary longshot and achieve nothing other than give your position away. 

[No105_Swoose]

S! e_r,

 

I'd strongly recommend watching these You Tube videos made by CannonFodder5:

 

How to: IL-2 Dive Bombing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJdFFuaz_GE&t=4s

 

How to: IL-2 Rockets https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZBUDtW42Ww&t=3s

 

I still can't hit squat with rockets, but the dive bombing techniques video helped me improve my skills a lot and rack up some ground kills.

 

 

[CrazyDuck]

This is how I deal with the situation (under fighter attack) online (IL-2 being my primary online mount :))

 

When enemy fighter is approaching, I man the gun myself, but I don't shoot - I just fly straight on, so enemy starts to think that I don't see him. When they finally close in enough to open fire, I still don't shoot; I rather evade their attack by sudden hard maneuvering. He will reposition for another attack, firmly believing my gunner is either dead, out of ammo or incapacitated in any other way, since there was no defensive fire on the first pass - this makes them approach me much less carefully the second time. When they lazily park themselves on my tail and close in to deliver coup-de-grace, I finally open fire from the mighty UBS.

 

UBS is a hard hitting weapon, the most powerful HMG in the sim. But, it only has 200 rounds, so don't waste the ammo at long distance "spray and pray" kind of fire. You'll run out of ammo in no time.

 

Fighters are also quite lazy when they overtake an IL-2 after firing pass. With a bit of luck and skill, you can lay a 23 mm shell up his tail - which usually means bad news for him.

It's also interesting how often blue fighters decide to engage IL-2 in a headon! Needless to say, the only danger for an IL-2 in such a situation is a headon collision, and with basic shooting skills it usually means a free kill.

 

Now with the new 109s with the 108 cannon, things are becoming more complicated tho.

 

 

Edited March 24, 2018 by CrazyDuck

[7.GShAP/Silas]

4 hours ago, Royal_Flight said:

Alternatively, set the fuse to five seconds and they arm after hitting the ground from any altitude.

Only issue comes in hitting moving targets, where there's a risk they'll drive out of the way. 

 

 

This is correct with the five second fuse.  The only reason to ever use anything other than the five second fuse is for moving targets, which are uncommon online.  And for those I'd rather use rockets and/or PTABs.

 

 

1 hour ago, CrazyDuck said:

Fighters are also quite lazy when they overtake an IL-2 after firing pass. With a bit of luck and skill, you can lay a 23 mm shell up his tail - which usually means bad news for him.

 

 

This is also very true.  This is another reason to take pure AP belts.  One hit and their wing or rudder will pop right off and nothing is more satisfying than knocking them down.

 

[unlikely_spider]

One issue is that in the scripted campaigns you can't change the loadouts it seems. So I'm stuck with 3 second delay.

[Frenchy56]

There are people RIGHT NOW who play IL-2 and have never flown the IL-2

[216th_Jordan]

11 hours ago, engrish_major said:

One issue is that in the scripted campaigns you can't change the loadouts it seems. So I'm stuck with 3 second delay.

 

That must be a bug, you should always be able to change the delay.. Maybe set 5 seconds in a quick mission and see if it was saved?