Quote:
Originally Posted by Friendly_flyer
I am primarily an off-line flyer, and don't really care about one side having an edge over another. I fly almost exclusively "red", preferring Hurricanes rather than Spitfires. I am extremely pleased with the "new" 'Tilly orifice'! Thank you TD for making the game more immersive!
From a purely game enjoyment-POW, I think neutral trim for all planes (not just Spitfires) should be set to combat speed. When you are cruising around at economy setting, you have all the time in the world to fiddle with the trim-knob. When in a fight you have more than enough with keeping an eye on temperatures, superchargers and stalls, not to mention trying not to get shot down. Going straight and level for a few seconds to adjust your trim is fairly low on the priority-list.
I have no idea how trim was adjusted in real life. I suppose a pilot could always ask the mechanics to adjust it to his personal liking. I would therefore like to ask TD if they would consider changing the trim setting so that "neutral" trim is close to maximal cruise speed rather than to maximal fuel economy cruise speed in the upcoming 4.11 patch. Would that be possible without upsetting some other aspect of the game code?
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If the trim was adjustable in flight there was no reason to do anything.
If you mean presets for the ground adjustable trims (for example, rudder in a 109 or aileron in a hurricane), then i guess it does have some merit.
For pilot-adjustable trim tabs it's a non-issue since the pilot will be fiddling with it soon enough. For example if my mechanic sets my elevator trim in the Spit and i climb in the cockpit, i'll see the trim indicator needle showing an off-center position and i'll have the same amount of remaining trim towards either direction as if i had done it myself, it's not like i somehow have a "surplus" of trim tab tab travel because the mechanic did it.
In any case, the main problem with what you describe is that real life combat speeds are not IL2 combat speeds. First of all, what is combat speed? I guess we could define it as the airspeed reached with maximum continuous power and in level flight.
Well, if trims were set to real life combat speeds, people would still complain and the reason is simple: both us and the AI fly way faster than was possible in reality, due to the simplified engine management model.
For example, there would be no reason whatsoever to trim a Spitfire's ailerons for +16lbs or something like that which could be held for less than a minute, they would probably trim it for something like +8/+9 lbs of boost which was actually what the engine could do indefinitely without overheating or damage. In IL2 we all fly higher than those limits because the only penalty is a resettable overheat timer that must reach 5 minutes before any damage occurs, the AI doesn't have any penalty whatsoever, so we have to choose between unrealistic trim presets or more manual control inputs at the unrealistic high speeds we attain. Actually, it's not the speeds per se that are unrealistic, it's how long we can keep going that fast that is the problem