i wouldn´t call the default belting completely useless, you can and will down planes if you shoot to your convergence and if you hit vital parts of the enemy a/c (i.e. fuel tanks, engines, pilot, controls...). in my current setup i use 50%ball, 25% ap and 25% incendiary and do down aircraft, but only if i shoot to my convergence hitting vital parts!

I can knock multiple Stukas down with a single ammo load.

Set convergence to the right distance, use small variations (1 to 2 m) in guns if you need a spread.
Put tracers on your outside guns (1 and 8)
Put Armour piercing. incendiary in the middle guns. (don't forget to load De Wilde ammo!)

Get up to your convergance distance. Learn where this is, what it feels like to be there and get there every time.

let rip. ratta-tat-tat!

Boomie boom!

As soon as an AI stuka drops out of formation, they generally crash. It's different from Il2, the way the "killed" aircraft behave. You often don't even need to knock em completely out, just stop them from being able to effectively fly home.

Urizen is right. The default settings for the guns (I swap out the observer rounds for more incendiary) are pretty deadly with accuracy.

I switched at one point to all AP and De Wilde and thought it was great.

Then, after a post by Robo. about historical gun loadouts for the RAF fighters I went back to a more historical mix and I've had more success than I did with 50/50 AP/De Wilde.

Your milage may vary, of course.

And if you should have changed your loadout to AP and deWilde, don't forget to be really upset when a online server forces realistic(historic) loadouts. :D :D :D

As far as I have seen, from playing flight sims 10+ years, IL2:1946 mods Dark Blue World etc have best AI at the moment.

4.11 AI is leaps and bounds better than that.

The AI planes in QM don't do the ridiculous rolls like they once did (I DL the AI mod and it helped) but the movement of the planes is still twitchy and robotic. In other sims including IL2 the plane's behavior is much more fluid and realistic. Anyone else seeing this?

From what I've read this is true. I mean so that can't see through clouds?! Great!
But the rest is still woefully behind, and lacking in so much content.
Here's hoping for a quick incorporation of 4.11 into dbw.

Agree, the default loadout is a mess and not very effective even with correct convergence. Unfortunately, the only way to change a Quick Mission loadout is to save a custom version of the mission, then copy the MIS file to the Single Missions folder, open it using FMB to drop a custom loadout into it (assuming you have created one). You may be able to change the loadouts as a 'Single mission' without using FMB following changes in one of the previous updates.

There are other ways of doing the above using 'Notepad' but I do find it odd that CloD does not allow the user to use custom loadouts in SP.

I never knew the Stuka was SO well armoured. So when britsih pilots talked of a "Stuka Party" they ment something else?

Yeah, i cannot wait for the sky tank either - cementer! :grin: Iwonder why the Russians didn't place fixed guns facing rearwards with a periscope aimer, just like the Arado jet bomber, would have saved weight of a rear-gunner! :confused:

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