Air to Air Combat

[dave.green]

Just getting started with Falcon 4 AF, managed to land the plane (most of the time) and got turns nailed. But I am getting slaughtered during the Air to Air Training Missions...

First problem don't know, which is the best Mig to lock up first, no matter what I do I seem to get hit by another on before I blink, no warning well none that I see. I've tried keeping my airspeed down to maximise turning and trying to keep people from behind me, tried flying faster to outrun. Anyone got any tactics to keep me alive!

[jex]

You've just entered the most complex part of any flight sim - air to air combat.

There are far too many variables to help you out in a post. You feel the need? - the need to read? lol no really, you should read as much as you can. There are plenty of website's dedicated to air-air combat but it is a massive subject that detail angles vs energy fighters, how gravity affects turn rate. What seperation does for you - the F-Pole and A-Pole, high yo-yo and low yo-yo, scissors and corner speed. Even after you know all of this (and this isn't all there is), You have to be able to recognise when and where to employ your manouvers.

In short either read up or book a training flight - ideally you should do both.

Welcome to TG

[Vulcan]

The PDF manual has some good info on A-A. Give it a read, I think it's a matter of experience and being able to read the right guages along with using the right maneuvers. It's the ultimate test for pilots IMHO.

[Shogun]

"1 turning to steerpoint 5, Angel 20. Hey guys whats that terrible alarm?!"







"Boom"



"1 Ejecting!"



lol

[TG_PolishBoogieman]

A-A combat is my weakest area...my situational awareness needs some serious work. Vulcan and I were in a furball last night and I was having a difficult time...unfortunately it seems like something that will improve only with lots of time and patience. Can't be learned overnight!

[jex]

Originally Posted by TG_PolishBoogieman

A-A combat is my weakest area...my situational awareness needs some serious work. Vulcan and I were in a furball last night and I was having a difficult time...unfortunately it seems like something that will improve only with lots of time and patience. Can't be learned overnight!

Exactly. It won't come over night but it is likely that it won't come if you just fly. You need to read and learn off more experienced pilots than yourself to master Air-Air combat. As the saying goes, fighter pilots aren't born - they are taught

Saying that there are a few things that you should know - i.e. how to lock targets and fire missiles. Once you have all that then you should work on the tactics and manouvers.

[Vulcan]

I really love the A-A combat. As such i'll be doing this more and more. Once i get experienced enough with it, i'll help out with training as well!

[dave.green]

Retried some Air-Air Combat after all your advice, concentrating on defensive & offensive BFM and managed to stay alive in a canons only furball lastnight, for *longer* than normal, my shooting down of another aircraft is awful, couldn't hit anything with the canon but at least I managed to avoid the canon fire this time and close in behind him at which point he managed to shake me off and get on my 6 again and repeated many times until I ran out of fuel and had to land in the middle of the fight, most embarassing

[jex]

One German ace of WW2 used this method...

When the enemy plane fills your cockpit window, that is the time to fire

[Vulcan]

Here is a great read on the some A-A dodging.

http://www.frugalsworld.com/falcon4/missiles.shtml

[dave.green]

All the advice has been great, getting better now, still a long way to go found some good information here http://www.sci.fi/~fta/acmintro.htm#Menu

Mucking about with views last night, tried virtual cockpit, all the spinning was making me dissy, trying to turn my view to keep sight of the bandit and put him in my lift vector, tried the situational awareness bar wasn't working for me, but had most luck with the extended FOV cockpit

[Vulcan]

One of the things you wanna do, as mentioned in the article is get used to swapping from padlock view to 2d cockpit view. You'll wanna program it on your flight stick.

[Dread]

I just bought the game last week and am having a load of trouble myself. I haven't even gotten to missile combat yet. Any advice on how to get someone from being on your tail to being in your sights? I know... I know... That's the whole point of air to air combat and what all the maneuvers are for. Trust me, I have read them and have spent hours now trying them. My problem is that they just don't seem to work for me. I have been playing gun only furballs and have not shot down a single plane yet (other than an A-10 which I don't even consider an accomplishment) after about 15 hours of trying. I try cornering with my nose below the horizon, above the horizon, split S turns towards the sky, towards the ground, pirouettes towards the ground and towards the sky, dropping my throttle to idle and hitting the speed brakes ect ect. The entire fight the enemy stays right on my 6 without breaking a sweat. I say "enemy" and not name a plane type because I have tried half the list with the same results.

I try them with and without afterburners although I know using the afterburner allows me to corner faster because I can pull more Gs at corner speed (which means I am turning faster right?) It would be nice not to have to use the afterburner for 10 minutes, though. Since I am assuming after just one fight like that I am going to either need to refuel or abort the mission due to lack of fuel to make it to the target and back.

So what I am asking is what could I be doing wrong that not only does the enemy not come anywhere near my gun sight, but he never even leaves my 5-7 o'clock. I must be doing something drasticly wrong to be doing this bad. This is against recruit enemy pilots by the way and I have even tried turning all the realism settings down to minimum (which I am very much against since the realism of this game is 90% of the fun of it)

[jex]

Hey Dread,

We can hook up some time if you like and go over a 1 v 1 scenario. I can show you a few moves that should help you out. Se ethe sticky at the top of this forum for my hours of availability.

[Dread]

That would be great. I'll try to figure out the radar and try practicing my maneuvers a bit more the next day or two and then I'll send you a PM. So far I can fly basic maneuvers, take off, land (I can actually do this fairly well), I'm pretty good with all aspect heat seekers (never been behind an enemy to use the rear aspect heh) and I can fire radar guided missiles without any clue how to target with them. If it wasn't for their own onboard radar I'm sure I would never get a kill with them (at least I think that is what's guiding them to their target). I have mostly just been working on trying to get behind enemy planes so I have a chance to survive a WVR fight.