Tips for new arrival from WT

[SeaQuark]

So I've recently leaped here from War Thunder (Simulator mode only, of course, none of that mouse-aim nonsense). Many of the flying skills I learned there are applicable, but there's a few things that are new territory for me.

 

(If it makes a difference, I will likely only be flying Laggs & Yaks).

 

Radiators: in WT there is a single generic "Radiator" control, and I seem to have a handle on it: closed radiators = less drag / more heat, open = more drag / less heat. But here in a more realistic Sim, there's 3 different radiator controls: Oil, Water, and Cowl flaps, if I'm correct. How does one go about managing these? Which one makes the biggest difference towards the drag / heat exchange? In WT I found myself keeping radiator at 100% open in climbing and cruising, and 0% closed if possible upon entering a dogfight.

 

Flaps: in WT flaps had presets such as "combat, takeoff, etc" but here the Lagg raises and lowers its flaps incrementally by degrees. And 

by contrast the Yak here seems to have only 2 separate flap settings. Where can I find a list of the appropriate flap settings for various situations? Or is it up to personal taste?

 

Finally, is there a way to toggle the gunsight on and off? That was very useful for spotting in WT, can't find it here.

 

Any other tips from those who have experience with both these games? I am focusing mostly on flying & engine management for now, saving the finer points of combat for later.

[oneeyeddog]

Hi seaquark. Here is a link to some extremely helpful tutorials, courtesy of Requiem. Hope this helps.

 

http://www.youtube.com/user/RequiemBoS

[IIN8II]

Welome to BoS. I definitely would recommend the tutorials posted above. I think you will find BoS a much more satisfying experience from WT.

[1./KG4_Blackwolf]

Welcome and do have a look at Requiem's stuff. It can help. Think of the degrees of flaps as combat..what about 5 to 10? Take off 20 or so and so on. I don't have a lot of Yak time but two settings is like a spit, up or down. Right now drag is modeled but I think not the damage. So if you drop your gear at 300kph it wont tear off or jam a flap. Torque is there so be easy with the throttle at take off. Lots of left rudder, don't push right just ease up on the left to keep it straight.( I find with the lagg if I give it a little forward stick around 70 or 80 mph the tail will lift up a little and I can steer it better) Reverse that rudder for the Yak.

 

In the cold air I take off full closed radiators both oil and water. Then open them to 50% or 40% after take off. Your mixture and rpm's will determine where you set the rad's at. Cowl flaps would be for a radial engine (la-5, fw-190 type)

 

No toggle gunsight that I know of.

 

Hope this helps a little.

S!

[Finkeren]

Welcome SeaQuark.

 

As for radiators, there are currently only 2 that you have to worry about, that's the oil and water radiator (cowl flaps are for air cooled engines, which will come with the Fw190 and La-5)

 

Each VVS (Soviet) aircraft have seperate gauges for oil and water temps (go to the pilots art forum to find tagged screenshots showing what's what in the different pits) so it's really just like WT except you have 2 things to watch and no HUD indicator telling you if you're running too hot.

 

It's my experience, that it generally takes less to keep the oil cool that the water, and you can usually leave the oil radiator half open during normal flight. The higher you go, the lower the temperature and the less cooling is needed. Also keep in mind, that overheating happens mostly through high RPM and less through high manifold pressure (high throttle setting), so when cruising you can lower the RPM (often, and incorrectly, refered to as the 'prop pitch') and lean the mixture while keeping a high throttle setting. This gives you the highest cruise speed with relatively good fuel economy and a very cool engine that hardly needs any radiator. Once in a fight, also keep in mind, that the lower your air speed is the less effective your radiators work, so if you keep high throttle and high RPM (as you often do in a fight) while also burning energy and flying slow, your engine will heat up very quickly.

 

As for flaps: Even though they're operated by the same 2 keys, there's a lot of difference between the different aircraft.

 

The simplest systems are found on the IL-2 and Yak-1. They're pneumatically operated and have only 2 settings up and down. Normally they're only used for landing though a heavily loaded IL-2 might need them for take off as well. Currently they can also be used in combat to give a short burst of high turn rate, but this is highly a-historical and often frowned upon.

 

The Ju 87 has flaps with fixed settings almost identical to WT and IL-2 1946, simple to use but keep an eye on the flap indicator to remember what setting you're currently using.

 

The Bf 109s have manually operated flaps, which are deployed smoothly by turning a wheel. However they are very, very slow to deploy and retract and should only be used when landing and to a small degree when taking off with bombs. Also keep in mind, that the 109 has no in-cockpit flaps indicator but rather a row of small markings on the inner left side flap, each line represents 10 degrees.

 

The most useful flaps are propably found on the LaGG and the Pe-2. They are electrical and deploy smoothly like the 109's but much faster. They should be used in small increments on take off, as well as for landing (note that the Pe-2 have extremely effective flaps, so never use full flaps when landing, 15 - 20 degrees is more than enough) The electrical flaps can also (still somewhat a-historically) be used in combat to give momentarily better turn rate and climb, though it comes at the price of a lot of energy. They can also be put to good use when your engine is knocked out or damaged to prolong your gliding distance.

 

That's what I have to hive you. Hope you can put it to good use.

[Finkeren]

As for the gunsight. It seems that the devs currently don't have plans to make it posible to either adjust in any way or turn off (seems like we're not even gonna get the recticle dimmer on the German sights that we had in the old IL-2)

 

All that is subject to change with further development though. Rise of Flight evolved tremendeously over the years, both in terms of content and the depth of simulation.

Edited April 25, 2014 by Finkeren

[SeaQuark]

Thanks for the link, and thanks Finkeren for that extremely informative post. I did not realize that flaps could be used for improving a glide in the event of engine failure! I just assumed they would slow you down. If I understand you correctly, are you saying that-- historically-- flaps weren't used for combat on these planes or in this theater of war? Only for landing & take-off?

 

In WT I rarely use them, since it totally commits you to the target you are chasing, but there have been some instances where it seemed prudent to get that tighter turn, even at the price of losing speed/energy. In most cases though I am much happier disengaging and regaining altitude & awareness before making another pass. Do you personally recommend ever using them in combat, or do you go without?

 

I have one more question (that I don't see covered in Requiem's videos): How on earth do you folks navigate? On some of the single-player missions it's easier with a huge river and a smoking city nearby, but on that snowy multiplayer map, everything looks the same. This also discourages me from getting a lot of altitude, since I will quite easily get disoriented up in the clouds.

 

I've tried keeping careful track of whether I'm heading East or West and so on, but the second my attention gets drawn somewhere else (like a dogfight), I just lose all sense of where I am. 

[Finkeren]

About flaps and gliding, perhaps I should be more specific: It's true that using flaps increase drag, and therefore you should not deploy them immediately when losing engine power and starting your glide. Rather you should deploy them in increments as you start to lose air speed to keep your rate of descend as low as posible, thereby prolonging the glide. Only on that very last stretch should you use full flaps.

[Finkeren]

You can use flaps in combat, and I don't really see that as a problem, as long as the sim allows it. The thing is, that there are two factors about flap use that are not yet implemented in BoS, but will be. One is a damage model for the flaps, leave them deployed at too high air speeds and they might become stuck or even torn off. The other thing missing is the fact that most of the flap operating systems, especially the pneumatic ones, didn't have the power to deploy the flaps or keep them down above certain air speeds, so you simply shouldn't be able to drop the flaps in a Yak going 450 km/h. Try to avoid that, since it might teach you bad habits, which you'll have to un-learn later.

 

Where you can use flaps in combat with some kind of historical accuracy, is in increments during a slow turn fight or as a large effort to try to avoid a stall.

[Finkeren]

As for navigation, it's true that the snowy landscape drowns most landmarks, but the shapes of forests, rivers and settlements are still pretty distinct and can in fact provide enough clues to give you a position, especially with a little training.

 

That being said, I think most of us get lost from time to time, especially in a fight. Try to always find time, whenever there's lull in the fight, to also gather information on your position, don't immediately start looking for the next target.

 

Some planes, including the Yak-1, will eventuallly have working radio navigation, but how it'll work remains to be seen.

 

To train your skills I recommend setting up quick missions with you flying alone in overcast weather. Try staying above the clouds and ocasionally dip under in strafudmålingen intervals (say every 3 minutes) and see, how quickly you can get your bearings. This will teach you something about what to look for in terms of landmarks and also give you an idea about navigation by dead reckoning.

Edited April 25, 2014 by Finkeren

[BeastyBaiter]

In regards to engine cooling, I've been running with radiator, oil radiator and cowl flaps all assigned to the same joystick axis (a wheel on my X-52). So far it has worked well for me, haven't had any cooling issues like that. The oil does tend to stay a bit cooler I've noticed, but never in danger of over cooling. The oil radiator doesn't seem to add much drag when open, the big one is the water radiator so having oil open a little more than needed doesn't seem to hurt anything. On an air cooled engine the cowl flaps will replace the water radiator, and once again it will be the main drag component. Thus there shouldn't be any issues as planes are added, but we'll see.

 

For flaps, this is somewhat a matter of personal taste. With the 109F I only use them for landing. They are too slow to respond for anything else I find. I'm a bit more aggressive with them in the LaGG-3. I takeoff without them typically, land with full and fight with anything from none to full. As you already know, dropping flaps really commits you, so that's purely a tactical decision. I find myself using them any time a 109 has an energy advantage though. The Yak I don't see much use for flaps other than landing do to the on/off nature of them. But in a stall fight I suppose they could be handy. They deploy and retract quickly if nothing else.

 

For navigation, we all get lost periodically with map icons off. It doesn't help that we can't zoom the map yet. My solution is to look for the big landmarks (large towns, major rivers) and go from there. Getting lost happened often in real life as well. There are a fair number of cases of pilots landing at a hostile airfield accidently. If you can't see anything big, then take what you know and pick a direction to something huge that you simply can't miss (ie the Volga). You should know what direction that is if nothing else. On the small map, it's easy enough to simply pick a direction and fly till you reach the end. That will tell you more or less where you are.

[SCG_Space_Ghost]

As for the gunsight. It seems that the devs currently don't have plans to make it posible to either adjust in any way or turn off (seems like we're not even gonna get the recticle dimmer on the German sights that we had in the old IL-2)

 

All that is subject to change with further development though. Rise of Flight evolved tremendeously over the years, both in terms of content and the depth of simulation.

 

Which is absolutely ridiculous and makes the Revi sight a hindrance...

[LLv34_Flanker]

S!

 

 Whatever, did not hurt Good to see new pilots discovering BoS