Dogfight
 

hi all, need some advice for mp dogfights, have a few questions hopefully some will be willing to help.

1. convergence. I know it's personal preference but I think most people have it figured out because I unload on enemy aircraft with minimal damage where when I get hit I loose like both wings I have mine set at 220m both cannon and machine gun.

2. FOV. what fov do most people here fly around with when not shooting at enemy aircraft, and when shooting, what FOV do you prefer?

3. freetrack settings. currently I use small soft curve and 7 sensitivity with 150 smoothing, does this sound right?

4. joystick. I'm using x52 standard with 50 60 70 80 90 100 100 100 etc. for aileron and elevator. 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 for rudder(saitek) pedals 100 everything else.

would really appreciate some help, thanks, Jason

There's nothing you can do to change 1., it is a law of online gaming. The other people ALWAYS do much more damage much more quickly than you do. 220 seems about right, I usually use lower values of around 150, because I don't fire from far away, but it is personal preference.

2. Most zoomed out, biggest field of vision.

3. Coolie hat. ;)

4. I'm using similar settings for the stick, different stick, though, and I'm using higher settings for rudder, but I'm using the twisting of the stick. In your setup, you'll get 1% rudder deflection for 10% pedal travel, 4% for 20, 9% for 30 and so on. My experience is that I will often need deflection around 50% and this is harder to control with your settings than it is with for instance the settings you use for the other axis'.

what do you mean?

"it is a law of online gaming. The other people ALWAYS do much more damage much more quickly than you do"

they have to play by the same rules

also could someone clarify what the distance numbers for the icons mean, .50 is that 500 meters? .10= 100 meters?

This is easy! Dont do it. "Dogfighting is waste of time" - Erich Hartmann. ;)

Boom and Zoom...

bump

Yes, numbers for icons are given in kilometers. So .10 km is 100 meters.

JTD was joking when he was talking about online players...they always seem to be better than you :grin:

Convergence is important, but it's not the magic answer. To get good at shooting, you have to practice. I'm really bad at gunnery myself, so I can't give you feedback there. If you recorded a track, maybe someone can analyze it and give you tips.

To find a convergence that works for you, turn on icons in the difficulty menu. Go into the controls menu and set a key for "toggle icons". Set up a game in the quick mission builder with your favorite plane and some enemies and when flying, cycle the icons until they disappear.

Right as you pull the trigger to shoot, pause the game, and toggle the icons back on, and note the distance. Do this each time you shoot, and make an average. This is YOUR best convergence.

Online, this might be different because human players present different opportunities to shoot. In that case, fly with icons on if possible, but try to ignore them. Record a track and note later when you start to shoot.

My convergence is 200, but I've used 100 with great success. I like to use 700-1000 for ground attack (Il-2, Hs-129, Stuka G-1, etc).

To answer your other questions: 2) Normal, Normal 3) Mouse :-P 4) 10,20,30,40....100 all axes; 2-3 notches of filtering to kill the spikes.

1. 120m for planes with wing mounted weapons (if there are machineguns with cannons in the wings - like the Spitfire -, then I set machineguns further out at about 180m). Hold fire till 150m.

2. During shooting the most zoomed one, for everything else the most wide one (I switch between them via joystick hat - forward: zoom in - backward: zoom out).

It's a murphy's law kind of thing. It always seems like the other guy is doing way more damage and flying way more effectively than you are. In some cases that is legitimately the case (by skill) but more often then not it's just a human perception thing.

1) I set my convergence at 275 meters and I'm happy with it there. I've tried other settings but this is where I'm most effective.

It's coincidentally roughly the same distance as used by US Navy fighter pilots.... but I arrived at this distance on my own. I went into the QMB, shot up a bunch of aircraft using my preferred types, recorded a track of the sessions, estimated the ranges that I opened fire with reasonable chance of scoring a kill and then set my convergence at that distance.

Obviously you're already seeing that this is a huge personal preference thing. The key is finding out what your preference is as a fighter pilot.

2) I use the game defaults for wide, normal and narrow. Forget the percentages but the defaults work perfectly. For gunnery I go narrow, for dogfighting I go normal/wide and just flying about I use normal.

3) Don't use it so I can't comment.

4) These are my settings for my X-52:
I've bolded the important ones. As you can see...I prefer to have the sensitivity set WAAAY down. I find it makes life a lot easier on me and apparently it's more like the real thing anyways.

thanks everyone, gives me something to think about and experiment with. ~S~

Agree with IceFire, my guns convergence are set to 275 meters as well however; I'm a JaBo pilot and fly exclusively for the Luftwaffe. I find 275 meters for ground attack staffing is perfect for me. I target a lot of AAA fortified positions / AAA vehicles etc, so it has to achieve maximum effect with the least amount of rounds striking the target. For me (after a lot of testing) 275 meters suits my closure rate / engagement to target.

For your consideration

Ven

Actually this is another good point... I also do a lot of jabo (fighter-bomber) work and for strafing runs the 275 is a good mix. In fact I wouldn't mind setting it out further in some cases, however, this is pretty good for hitting tanks and vehicles with anti-tank guns and the like. It's the distance where I have a reasonable chance of being on target with the first or second shot.

Sometimes the individual aircraft might also make a difference. For instance, if I'm flying a plane like the early Zero, or an Emil, I'll set my nose guns out to .300 and the wing cannons to .200. This allows me to 'nibble' on longer range targets with my machine guns but still have my cannons zeroed at a more effective range for them (and the nose guns will still be close anyway). If I'm running a Friedrich or later with all the guns in the nose I'll just run them all at .300 or for instance a Spitfire which has cannons that can "reach out and touch someone" I'll also set the convergence out more.

I guess what I'm saying is that part of the fun of this gig is learning more about the different plane types and where their weapons work best.

Beyond that the best advice I can give you is to stick with just a few types at first that really suit your temperament and really get good with them, then slowly add new types and adjust your style to suit.

For instance if you enjoy a good "knife fight in a phone-booth" you're going to want to fly planes like the Zero or the Hurricane. If you like to cruise around in the stratosphere and pick out your target and pounce like an eagle an FW190 or a P51 is for you.

Different fighting styles will also dictate how you set your control curves; if you like to 'Boom 'n Zoom' your going to want a "softer curve", where as you will want that stick as tight as you can get it for 'knife fights'.

I prefer using linear curves for all axis, ie. all-100 in the in-game settings, no filtering, no dead band. This has the advantage of always having the same reponse per stick move, regardless of trim settings.

It might feel tricky first, though, as its more sensitive than default settings in the middle area.

turned the sensitivity up on my rudder pedals, changed convergence to 150, and set up 3 buttons (one wide, normal, gunsight) it's working out great, blew the wings right off a couple planes tonight, got mine blown off too but I feel like I've leveled the playing field a little, freetrack is still hard, wouldn't think of flying without it but it's really difficult to turn you head sideways and look at the screen, or when you try to look behind and up, thanks for all your help:grin:

my boom and zoom sucks still, everyone plays soooo low, tried p51 but blackout pulling g's, need to work on my throttle control. wish there were more video tutorials, saw one on gunnery teaching lead which really helped, was funny also, would be cool to see some on prop, throttle, dive angle, landing, everything. anybody know where some vids like that are?

My MSFFB2 is almost 10 years old and is a bit worn, so I use a completely different scale. 1, 4, 9, 16 etc. Otherwise the smallest movement jerks my plane way past my intended aiming point. It's tricky as well but I have more success that way. I zoom in & out on the fly, using buttons 3 & 4 on my stick, using joytokey repeating 25 times per second, pushing the keyboard buttons I configured to increase or decrease the zoom in small steps. Very smooth. I have convergence at 200 meters because I don't like the collateral damage when a plane blows up in my face.

If you want real boom and zoom... (not that american .50 crap), take a FW190

Keep in mind that Boom and Zoom is much easier on full real servers, where it's much easier to jump an unsuspecting enemy (no F6). People also generally tend to fly higher on full real servers - where P-51 is better.

Also, never take more than 50% of fuel in Mustang. Its maneouverability changes dramatically as fuel drops below, say, 40 or 30%, which still gives you about the same flying time as a Bf 109 with full tank!

I see two ways to line up a target.

#1 you can try to push your nose around to follow the target until you have the right sight picture with lead

or

#2 you can set your path to smoothly point ahead of where the target is moving and let the target move into the desired sight picture then wait to shoot when he will cross the sight at the same time your shots do.

The thing about #1 way is that aiming by stick correction involves not only your prop gyro precession (yaw movement results in some pitch movement and vice versa, if you lower your prop rpms the strength lessens) but slip/roll coupling to make your plane want to bank when you yaw. And then when the pilot corrects for the effects, quite often the pilot ends up making it worse. All that jiggling slows you down and then if you were too busy 'aiming' to keep up with the trim, you stick movements will be a ways off center and not so precise, depending on your stick sliders.

I don't much like method #1. I like method #2.

I have noticed before when trying to shoot #1 way that the nose would bob and weave just as I was getting decently on target. Okay, that was long ago but it still works the same basic way still. And I thought then that the nose didn't bob and weave as I was just flying along and -not trying to aim-, nose come around nice, sweet and steady. So that's when I worked on the #2 method above. It's good in all crossing attacks, yoyos and like as well as pure Hartmann BnZ.

If you can fly smooth, without the nose wobbling then you should be able to make the #2 method work.

Watch on BnZ if you're closing at 50+ m/s (180+ kph faster), shots will go high with relation to the target and do more of that the longer the shot is.

It's because in that gunsight view, the target appears to approach you. By the time the bullet reaches the point you aimed for the target has gotten maybe 10-50m closer, the shot will appear to have gone high or wide viewed in relation to the target.

Zooming in fast lets you shoot longer as if it isn't. When closing really fast, aim as if the target is closer, use less lead, because he will be closer when the shots get to him or pass him by. Shoot from a little early to a little late and it might be 1/2 second burst. All the bullets don't have to hit, only enough do.

Interesting breakdown of gunnery. Very informative. I've found that although I have a basic grasp of the theory that when I'm doing shooting it's mostly by intuition and experience.

In fact I find it's best for me not to think when shooting... sounds weird but I find that the best way for me to hit the target is to prepare for the shot and then I wait just a little bit longer and then fire.

The wait time gives my brain a chance to work through the details and line up the shot. If I try and do it too quickly my estimation is more likely to be off.

I only go on full switch servers so no icons or distance markers. I tend to fly mainly Brit fighters with convergence at 200ft and use the gunsight ring to establish distance. I also prefer to use separate triggers for cannons and Machine guns. I think you have to find what suits you best and what works with the weapons loadout you have.

Freetrack: Very personal regards setting movement but I set my axis curves with a small deadzone with slow initial movement then rapid acceleration to 6. I use the 4 way POV to toggle WIDE VIEW (page down) and 'Toggle gunsight' which drops you into 2 DOF (if using 6DOF) and also brings you closer to the gunsight without zooming in (which I cant get on with due to the 'headshake' effect and is very similar to CoD even though this command is mainly for fighters that have off-set gunsights).

I found MP a steep learning curve and low altitude Dogfights a waste of time - many of the better flyers use altitude and just bounce you as a sitting duck

Yep. Its not so much about learning the best or "optimal" way of doing things, but finding out what works to you and developing from that.

After all there arent many questions you can ask about this game and have a clear yes/no answer.

Personal pref

MG:250
Cannons:150

I have not read this whole thread, so forgive me if I'm repeating whats been said already... but, I have found that people who have good rudder pedals, and know how to use them, will get much better results then people who use a twisty joystick. Also, learn about keeping the "ball centered", as you line up your shot...your bullets will drift off target, even if you seem to be aiming dead on, if you don't keep the ball centered.