a close encounter

[HappyHaddock]

last night I did something I've not done in ages; that is after spending hundreds of hours taking IL-2 apart, I actually loaded up a camel in the quick mission generator and just spent half an hour dog-fighting above the clouds.

 

A camel with a full tank of fuel at about 9000 feet isn't the same beast it is with a near empty gas tank at tree top level, and when bounced by a D VIIF I had quite challenge; the new physiology effects limited some of the more extreme moves that used to be possible in the camel and the new AI was actually using its energy advantage against me and wasn't going to be drawn down to the deck in a tight twisting turn fight.

 

The result of this was that after about ten minutes of intense "inaction" in which  a lot happened but neither of us got into a position to fire a single shot I knew I couldn't make run for it and had to do something unexpected to break the stale-mate. Consequently I pulled an insanely tight stall turn momentarily losing sight of my opponent. The next instance something flashed in front of me and I instinctively hit the trigger without knowing what I was shooting at or if I'd hit it. With my head lurching left and right I tried to re-gain sight of my opponent then aggressively threw my own plane sideways as my opponent made some sort of insane kami-kazi attempt to ram me. I knew I had the altitude to recover from my resultant spin but half expected to be showered in bullets as I spiralled earthwards....

 

As I regained control of my camel I found myself coming up behind the D VIIF who was oddly making no attempt to evade me, making it easy to close right up on his tail... the cockpit was empty and the empty plane was just gliding, there was no sign of damage, no vapour trails, smoke or flames and as I looked up the pilot was just drifting down on his parachute, it had been an empty plane that had nearly collided with me.

 

I don't know what I did to cause the AI pilot of the D VIIF to bail out and if more by luck than skill I had actually hit the target with my brief gun burst, but the whole encounter made for a very different dog-fight.

 

What I will say is that if there are any ROF fans out there hesitating about whether FC is worth the purchase price, then I never had such an intense or unexpected encounter in ROF where the AI is just downright predictable and in many respects incompetent. So whilst there are things about FC that I'd like to be better, there is more than enough of it that is better than ROF to make it worth giving a try!

 

HH

 

 

[Zooropa_Fly]

It's a no-brainer as they say. Bot encounters are 10x better.

 

RoF'ers - where are you ?

[No.23_Triggers]

Good story - I once saw a German pilot bail out only to have his O.O.C aircraft hit his chute! 

[BMA_Hellbender]

This story would have a very different ending were it told by @US213_Talbot.

[No.23_Gaylion]

Well only one sentence difference, come now!