Keeping up with AI in level flight?
 

I have been playing Pacific campaign with F4F-3 Wildcat on full realism without auto-pilot. One thing that bugs me a lot is how the AI on a level flight from waypoint to waypoint always seems to go at the maximum perfect speed range. I can barely keep up with the leader but no way I can gain a speed advantage on them (in case I need to rejoin).

I am usually level-flying using this:

• Full throttle
• Pitch at 85-90%
• Trim as perfect as I can get
• Radiator fully open (don't think it adds to any drag)

Any tips? With the settings above I can get 245mph. Should I bother with supercharger? Although in the Pacific Campaigns all flights seem to be at around 2.2KM height, so I imagine supercharger wouldn't help me at all.

Mixture is at 100/normal. Playing on 4.11m.

The AI are programmed to fly at a certain speed to get to their waypoints, and they will match it, even in extended climbs (which is hard to keep up with).

I felt like this was especially bad in PF campaigns.

Go into your DGEN folder and find pacificplanes.dat and europlanes.dat. If you can't find them, open pacifiplanes.txt file and copy the contents into a dat file that you've copied (don't over-write an original one) and save as.

If you have the latest DGEN, find allplanes.dat.

In these files, you will find cruise speeds, cruise altitudes, and attack altitudes of almost every plane (you may have to add a few to allplanes.dat for the latest 4.11 aircraft).

I tend to multiply each speed by 0.75. However, I do use common sense for other aircraft and will make this speed lower if it's carrying bombs, etc.

I think on the F4F the supercharger needs to go to stage 2 at 2000m. Best way to check is to see if your manifold pressure goes up when you go to a higher stage. if it does then leave it there.

You might be able to squeeze out a bit of extra speed without overheating by increasing pitch a tiny bit and closing the radiators by a step or two.

On long level flights below your plane's optimal cruising altitude, you can also "cheat" a bit by flying 500-1000m higher than your flight. The F4F is fastest around 5000m I think, so the closer you are to that altitude, the faster you can go.

Supercharger helps...
Try dropping plop-pitch to 65% and throttle to around the same amount. You should be able to close your radiators to about ~2. Play around at these settings minimising radiators as far as possible.