Unable to keep up with my A/I squad mates in my flight in Career mode

[453=SGII_Wotan]

This was also a problem with IL2 1946, I am the new pilot assigned no 3 or 4 position in the section, we all take off and I am left behind. I struggle to maintain visual contact let alone formation.

 

Does everybody else who flies career of PWCG suffer the same issue?

Or is it because of my "pathetic" flight skills 

 

?just pathetic Wotan just pathetic ?

[Noisemaker]

I have the same issue in the stock career mode, especially in BP flying Spitfires.  Flight lead spends the entire ingress to target at full combat power, and often goes into WEP (as visible by the black smoke), meaning that if I want to have any combat power for actual combat, I need to rest the engine once in a while which leaves me lagging behind the formation after a time.

[Props]

Yeah, I had this problem at first and it was a bit frustrating, but I found a workaround that usually worked well for me: in most historic true life echelon flight formations the wingmen flew stacked higher than the lead and this allowed them to trade a bit of altitude for a some speed or to back off a bit  to hold their place in formation without a lot of throttle manipulation though there will always be some throttle work involved. In Careers all the flights are echelon right and stacked low with each wingman descending in echelon. This makes it very difficult to maintain position keeping up with a lead that is running just shy of max continuous combat power (he should be at nominal cruise). They also fly way to close to each other as if in passing review for an airshow instead of a bit more relaxed combat spread so this increases the difficulty (I saw AI wingmen often collide turning to take up our position over a escort at the start of a mission!). It's funny and appreciated that in AQMB the flights are finger four with you in the lead. I did fly Careers Ironman and always started as new guy working my my up the ranks so I never knew where I was going to be positioned in the flight till I got to the mission profile page.

 

I did a bunch of Russian, British, and American careers for a while and quickly adapted my own flight position in the division. I will immediately cross to the lead's left wing and position about 20 meters or more higher, treating it like a finger four with a better combat spread even though we usually had 6 aircraft flights in career. This gave me space to maneuver and allowed me to regulate my speed and position better. I often found I could go to nominal cruise and hold position pretty well, just had to be ready when the lead made that little jog to the left before entering a covering orbit over a ground support mission. I seem to recall in IL-2 '46 that I would actually get my butt chewed by the AI for not staying in formation back then, but I could be imagining that;-). In GB the flight lead never hollers at you to stay in formation. And when escorting bombers or ground attack formations I tend to fly about 1000 m in front of the rest while we do our S-curves during our cover to target and usually I stayed pretty high so I could trade altitude for speed when the enemy showed up. On the way home I would actually do the opposite and bring up the rear in case we got chased a bit. These adaptations worked pretty well for me though you may want to adapt them to your own style. 

 

Holding formation is hard and takes practice GB, but you can be a bit of a renegade and work out your own formation protocols without penalty if you choose to.

[PatrickAWlson]

Mission makers can set a speed for a waypoint.  The AI may or may not take the hint.  PWCG sets them well within the range of cruise speed for every aircraft.  Why the AI decides to do otherwise I do not know.

[PB0_Roll]

I launched a spit9 career to check, since I had no problem with the Tempest. I was assigned a free hunt with a clean aircraft.

 

Indeed leader flew quite often above max continuous, but  during cruise he was slightly below. While holding at patrol point (no ennemy showed up) he was pretty slow, so I elected to fly a larger circle with more speed.

 

I had no problem to keep up but indeed I needed to not let him run.

[HankCzinaski]

I'm still learning but I can pass this advice (from some tutorial I watched on yt):

- stay alligned using rudder (turn&bank indicator -> "kick the ball" into middle position)

- stay trimmed

- manage radiators, mixture, rpm, super/turbo charger accordingly

- close canopy, raise flaps and gear (duh!)

Edited December 29, 2021 by HankCzinaski

[LukeFF]

Some of the cruise speeds should be better now, especially WRT the Spitfires, P-38, and P-51s. 

[453=SGII_Wotan]

I had this issue with a Dora 9 Bodenplatte career