How to perform Lag Displacement Roll Attack?
 

Here's my gripes with the manouver.

1. people seem to confuse this manouver with some other manouver like high yoyo. Apparently they are actually two entirely different manouvers basically?

2. This manovuer is really hard to visualize for me, what exactly is the attacker is supposed to do? (with the rolling part of this attack)

3. It would maybe help to understand, if you had a textbook example, which was worked exactly into a 3D animation (or game video for that matter). I tried to search youtube, but didn't really find much understandable examples of lag displacement roll attacks. Here's a picture of the manouver textbook case on page 94, of this web article http://www.virtualpilots.fi/feature/.../inpursuit.pdf


situation would be something like this. Attacker is coming at high speed diving towards a bandit, who is slightly lower than attacker.

bandit sees attacker, and bandit makes a sustained, break turn, towards attacker.
This is the textbook case isn't it?


4. Let's assume that the attacker (you) roll away (!) from the enemy (who is break turning)

Isn't this an obvious question but basically, at that moment in time, when you roll away from the bandit, the attacker cannot see bandit anymore? The defender could easily stop turning predictably like that because attacker can't see him anymore?

5. does the manouver work even if the enemy makes a break turn unsustainably? (as opposed to sustained turn, which I suppose would be better for the bandit, in theory, for energy retention purposes, but you never know)

After all, unsustained turn makes a really tight turn radius, I was wondering if the lag displacement roll allows to adjust to that turn radius?

6. Is the point about unsustainable break turn, redundant though? Because the bandit will have wasted a ton of energy, if he makes a massive turn at the edge of stall.

You roll to keep the target in sight and the best way to learn is through practice, though here I can say dedicated practice with friends can speed up the process.

Either go invulnerable or don't shoot if you use this for cooperative training.

Start by running one plane after the other at about 70%-80% throttle, get to some alt and start circling. The pursuing player then adds 5% throttle and tries to stay behind the slower moving leader while occasionally getting a firing solution.
If 5% is too much, try half that. Crawl before you walk, walk before you run.

You can use yoyos, barrel rolls, whatever works as long as you stay behind your slower moving target. It's a lot easier when you have distance to close and one lesson you learn is there is a too close for any speed difference where the time between possible shots gives the target a chance at grabbing initiative and you don't want that.

Try it in straight line flying but circles is what a lot of targets make. For this training, the lead should not get tricky and especially not go into the vertical until as that is training for something else.

Even being =on average= just 10 kph faster you can begin to learn this.

Go with invulnerable planes and unlimited ammo when you do get down to the gunnery training needed and make sure the target knows to ignore all hits and go all evasive as the training is about learning the mechanics/geometry and is not a better pilot contest.
If you don't know deflection shooting then it's best work out distances and timing on predictable targets until you have that internalized along with the flying.
Deflection is about when and where. You want your shots to arrive at a point where the target will be in the very near future. This is complicated by range and gun type and relative motion of shooter and target. In time you pick up on:
1) judging distance -- harder than it seems
2) judging speeds and relative speeds -- ditto
3) judging shot speed -- this can getcha when you switch guns after a while
4) vertical angle of the shot -- your rounds drop less firing up or down, but not much
5) all of the above together -- like how high relative speed makes your shots effectively faster and the longer the range the more any effects have.

It took me many hours to pick all that up but I had years of flight sim playing and some RL fun (not killing anything) to work it out in.

Last, if you can't get a friend to cooperate in training then get past the mudhen stage and go terrorize noobs on noob servers, but don't stay on the same server for more than a few lessons and don't pick on the same one while you're there. Who knows, maybe one or more will learn if they see how it's done? But get out if they even start to whine, okay? Chat saying "what was that?" is a sign you are learning but it's also your cue to not bag more than one or two more.
And every so often, get your own lessons handed to you on servers you find hard or you'll get soft on easy meat. It's not for penance, honest!

Yea, that kind of proficiency could definitely come useful in energy fights vs fighters.

Sometimes, you see bandit fighter going defensive, meanwhile you are zooming towards him with very good smash. You gotta decide though, go for deflection shot, or fly through (conserving your E). If the bandit is any good, he will break hard.

Problem for you now becomes, I go high, but it's like, I'm going TOO FAST LOL. Maybe the lag displacement roll could help in getting an effective shot at the enemy? That, or simply better throttle control and prop control during dives?

You don't exactly learn everything by simply boom&zooming every time. Although it can keep you alive for long time online. Old habits and patterns.

Although you do get an eye for this kind of speed difference (the exercise you proposed for in-game) when driving a car in real life and overtaking somebody on the road, indeed! Too bad my car has pretty much shit acceleration anyway so it's not like I overtake anyone on the road usually, hehe :mad:

PS: unless it's like an old granma driving at under-speeds on the highway.

That is a key phrase!

Specific maneuver oriented thinking and presentation, it can be too confusing. I actually had to read and reread about this maneuver and compare it to high yo-yo. And there it was! The key phrases are "lift vector", "maintaining visual contact to your opponent" and "meow."

Instead of thinking about "rolling away", just level your wings before pulling up. Then just look into the direction of opponent, often simply 9 or 3 o'clock, and chances are that you see them the whole time. Of course, it's easy only if you have a huge energy advantage and if your opponent makes a textbook break turn and so on. But if you can maintain visual contact, you can see what the opponent does next and plan ahead.
If your opponent burns lots of energy in the break turn to avoid your attack, while you conserve your own energy, all the better!

The way I see it, this is all simply an application of a boom & zoom attack, since you can sometimes try to get a quick shot at an opponent who's starting a break turn before you pull up.

the way I understood it...

you are paving the way, for extra turning room, when you are slightly rolling AWAY from the enemy (what is this madness going away from enemy!?)

but you must simply do it, you must pave the way, for extra turning room (because at high speed, your turn radius will be shit)

You're above your own corner velocity when you're doing this kind of stuff (usually)

-I mean, in the ideal scenario, textbook case, this starts with the attacker performing b&z, on the defender's ass.

-Defender is able to see the attacker, "ooh there comes BUBBA - I'll have to turn into him because that's what Dicta Boelcke says to me"

... attacker has a cunning plan; doesn't waste energy ...

... but momentarily converts some of that velocity, into extra altitude (also this creates momentarily distance separation, between two aircraft - this procedure is creating the turning room required) ...

... but at the "exit ramp'" of barrel roll; cunning attacker converts extra altitude into huge velocity ...

... coming for defender's ass again ... :mrgreen:



Why is this manouver sometimes better, than a normal high yoyo?

Does lag displacement roll, sometimes succeed where high yoyo fails? (or would fail)?

You do get very hard deflection shots sometimes with high yoyos, against break turns, NOT very easy shots

Why does lag displacement put you nicely at low angle-off, from bandit's 6 o clock (Im still trying to wrap my head around this part of the manouver, how can you defeat the defender's angles so well...)

Does high yoyo, simply RETAIN TOO MUCH energy? (for some situations?)

This is why I say to start simple in cooperative training with small speed differences. You can learn things that let you go on to bigger speed differences.

edit-add: for one thing, when you learn by doing you don't get hung up over terms.

Remember that rising slows you down, descending speeds you up, any maneuver more than 2G wastes speed. Have patience, don't get suckered into losing your speed advantage over a quick solution that slows you down.

At huge speed differences you can't stay behind without breaking contact for many seconds at a time and as I stated before, you risk the vict.. errr, target getting enough energy to take some initiative on you.

Do the first things before trying to speculate on more advanced tactics.
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Host a coop with invulnerable planes, unlimited ammo and ARCADE=1 to show where shots hit. Get someone to fly drone circles (no dodging, this is for TRAINING) at reduced throttle and another to work out staying behind while moving on average a bit faster while getting the occasional shot in.
Until you can do that you simply won't see how to begin to handle more.

Remember to take turns being target and pursuit.

"Why is this manouver sometimes better, than a normal high yoyo?
Does lag displacement roll, sometimes succeed where high yoyo fails? (or would fail)?"

I believe there are two reasons.

One, the high yo-yo is a tighter, more aggressive maneuver; the attacker stays closer to the defender and often has to shoot while diving form up high. It's not that hard to dodge a shot and force an overshoot from such an aggressive attack. The lag displacement roll on the other hand puts the attacker further back, on the defender's six or mid-high six and closing; more time for the attacker to set up a shot, more difficult for the defender to create a tough angle. For that reason, you should probably use the high yo-yo when your target is much faster than you; if you lag-roll against a 109 in your I-16, you probably won't catch him despite your initial energy advantage. If you're in a Yak or LaGG though, you probably will.

The second reason I suspect is that a lag displacement more confusing from the point of view of the defender. A high yo-yo is almost as clear in its intention as a hard break towards the defender's six, but in a lag-roll your attacker pulls up early (maybe he didn't see me?), rolls away (maybe he lost me or is distracted by one of my team-mates?), and additionally all those maneuvers are hard to track from inside the cockpit. In the confusion the defender just keeps flying straight.

The "roll away from the defender" part got me confused too - got me thinking to let them pass below your aircraft. I'm still not 100% sure I'm doing the textbook maneuvre, but as long as it works what I do, who cares about the textbook. Basically what you do is using your roll rate to change your planes heading - by pointing it roughly upwards, rolling and leveling out again.

I think this video explains it pretty well ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guVMVY2C6mM

^ Ohhhhhhhh now I see! Brilliant video! The pilot starts the maneuver before the target passes his gunsight, and that's why rolling away from opponent's turn enables the unbroken visual contact. Things are different and perhaps less aerobatic if you start pulling up after the other guy passes your gunsight - that's usually when you try an initial snapshot with a plane that has lots of cannons. Then it's just a regular nearly vertical climb, roll and see-what-happens-next.

Those bi-planes and tri-planes sure do turn on a dime, though! :grin:

How much energy would you lose, if you simply tried to turn into the breaking bandit, and simply try the high deflection shot?

Would you lose more E, compared a well executed, lag displacement roll? Probably you would lose quite a bit energy, if you really had to pull lot of Gs, at high speed turn, and if you still missed the shot. Depends on the attacker's plane also, though.

High yoyo would retain more of your energy, also.

But I have to try this manouver sometime online. I will be going on one week vacation to Canary islands (Lanzarote), tomorrow on 21st December, so the earliest time I can play IL-2 again, is on the 29th December or something.

LOL I'll just have to contain my eagerness for battle for even longer time! Maybe play golf or tennis there. And check out the beach babes of course :cool:

Beats me, but you could try shooting without actually turning much, sometimes from a leveled wings position, if you're fast and are indeed already in a lead pursuit. A bit of rudder with ailerons to compensate can be used to make a fine last second adjustment to your aim. If you miss though, you'll lose ammo, time and someone else might see the tracers from miles away - too soon.

I don't think this is worth wasting your time on. have been flying this sim online for a dozen years or so and there are much easier methods and explanations.

Just because someone writes a book does not mean anything, lots of dummies write books, and WWII pilots don't have anywhere near the hours of combat experience a lot of il2 pilots have.

Try this for beginners: If you are approaching a target at a high rate of speed from above, don't fly right at him fly at a point to either side of him several plane lengths. If you fly to his left side and he breaks left then he will fly right in front of your cannons. If he breaks right then he helps you because you can fit a larger radius turn into the space he makes between you and him that will not lose you energy.

Even better: Most targets that see you coming from their high six will try to zoom up at you for a head on shot or after they make you miss and shoot at you as you pass or gain some E. Fake them out by zooming back up smoothly as soon as they break, they will zoom up after you for a shot but you will be looping back out of range while they are shooting and you will come down on them right as they lose E and fall away from you at almost zero speed for an easy shot.

Practice practice practice is the best thing, the new AI is great for this. NO matter what you do, if it takes any thought then it is taking too long. You should be able to do the job without thinking at all.

Watched some US propaganda footage on utube yesterday showing our boys beating the Luftwaffe, lots of gun cam footage. What struck me is that the victims never moved, made no attempt at defence even with tracers wizzing by, even before they were hit. German footage shows pretty much the same. WW2 pilots seemed to fire from further away, 250 to 400 yards. There's much in Jumo's point. The weapons seemed to be a lot more effective than they appear ingame as well.

From my expreince with lag roll you can keep pressure on your target without loosing too much E. Simpy using rudder and trying to get gun solution gives your target more room to counter your attack after initial attack.

Things ofcourse change in multihostile environment.

You don't have to get or make the shot. if the target makes a hard turn that wastes his energy and you conserve yours then the fight is one step closer to the target not having the speed & alt to make a hard maneuver.

Jumo has it right about attack from one side. Hartmann wrote that only with his exit crossing the target's path behind the target and start to end, at much greater speed than the target. Hit or miss, he didn't hang around. Perhaps not having a refly button had something to do with it.

Don't follow a target's six co-speed trying to ease up close unless you can out-turn him at the speeds you're both flying. If he turns better then the closer you are, the easier it is for him to turn inside you.
Don't try to turn with a target from close to his six if you are going much faster. Climb to slow down and store your energy while rolling to keep him in sight while he burns his energy in that hard flat turn.

Closing with a target that's 100+ kph slower than you (you dived and leveled out to simplify the gunnery), start firing from long range (300+m depending on closure rate) but aim as if he is 50m closer than that range. The difference in speeds shrinks the travel time of your shots. Give it a short burst to test aim and depending on the result fire for effect or break high to set up another pass or leave.

Don't mix boom and zoom, turn fight etc. with Lag Roll maneuver. Lag roll can be used to cut corners if you have E advantage and keep you E adnvantage. If you overshoot executing lag roll and loose to much E then you are misunderstanding it.

Use it when you have more E and enemy is turning and you want to keep pressure, or when attacking unaware enemy who is changing direction.

And ofcourse using Hartaman's tactics is always the safest pet:) Topic is when to use Lag roll manuver:) LOL

Excuse me for being ridiculous, but ever since I read the title of this thread ...

Lag roll sets you up for side attacks.
Telling why not to turn fight is not mixing turn fighting in.
Yes, you can lag roll with high closing speed. Where is a rule that a lag roll does not end in a gun pass and switch to other tactic.

Here is a strategy: don't be predictable.

Again this is discussion about Lag Roll, not about HOW TO BE UNPREDICTABLE LOL

Lag roll sets you up for side attacks.
Sorry Gunz, you'll have to explain that one! Assuming I'm incomming on his six.....

If you coming on his six with more E and he turns you can setup attack with lag roll. Key thing is that you need to do it on right time not too late.MAXGUNZ is right that if you see that you will overshoot then you need to do something else. No single attack will make the difference if target is aware of you. Lag Roll is usable on some situations but not for all.

I still have my copy of Shaw's book. :D IIRC the lag roll attack diagram only has so many steps. :eek:

But you can use the tactic to stay behind a plane that is moving enough slower that you can zoom significantly higher, sorry for the lame grammar there.

Yes about THE difference though sometimes you get lucky. You might go from one ACM to another and back to the first in a single engagement.

How many of you use BCM's and ACM's just to get in position to start an attack as opposed to going straight in and then figuring your angles and energy?

If anyone can find the old Air Warrior player Bullethead, he had the whole energy fighting bag wrapped up very well. His tactics pages used to be up on Delphi and wow, distilled know-how. Once you learn his way, you won't ever want to turn fight again! The community lost a lot when those pages went down.

Found this: http://www.electraforge.com/brooke/f...or/awtaman.txt
which is HOW TO FLY AND FIGHT IN AIR WARRIOR, v3/21/1997
From wikipedia, it states that it cost $10 an hour to play, hmmm....Article referenced is some kind of manual, lots of it. Several mentions of "sissy like" behaviour which are not to be encouraged online. Didn't see anything about lag rolls tho....

Bullethead's pages covered energy fighting far more and better. Most all of the same material can be found in Shaw's book but in Shaw the pieces are more spread out and a harder read. Reading Shaw is a bit like chewing a brick, it takes longer to swallow and longer still to digest.

Bullethead outlined such energy tactics as "Rope-a-Dope" and "Dancing on his head".

If you ever find his stuff stick up a link, I'll give it a read. I know what you mean about Shaw, if I can't sleep I'll read a few pages, works every time. I wonder if learning stuff by rote is much help sometimes in the heat of the moment, one thing in this game that's widly historically inaccurate is not flying with at least a wingman and having to deal with an organised opposition of at least a pair. Rope a dope is fine 1v1 but 1v2?

http://gabi-laser.blogspot.com/2011/...ctics-and.html

This should do it.

AYE! THAT'S IT! THE DEAD HAS BEEN RAISED!

Wow Pickle, either you had a copy or your search skills are a freakin wonder!

No just lucky;)
I just happen to log on to this forum because I am looking into getting COD. I came across this discussion and remembered that article from my warbird days. Just did a search for "bullethead energy tactics" and it was the first in the Google list.

I had forgotten how great an article that was. Much better than Shaws book (not that it was bad, just long) that I have buried somewhere in the garage.