The Corsair is quite heavy, and has a lower power-weight ratio than the Zero. This means the Zero gets a good head start in terms of initial acceleration, so if you ever get slow in a Corsair, you are becoming easy meat. Keep the speed up, and get him to bleed his own speed.
In real life, it wasn't just raw performance that determined the victor. It was teamwork and tactics. The Americans initially had troubles with the Zero, but adapted tactics such as the "thatch weave" to allow slower Wildcats an opportunity to get Zeros. The Japanese held on to some tactics for too long; I've read that whenever the leader was shot down, the rest of flight went into disarray and could be picked off.
What I mean to say is that, the Corsair and other planes weren't necessarily perfect hot-rods. However, there are a few things which give the Zero a few advantages in Il-2 (the wings would bend if the ailerons were deflected at high speeds, making rolls very slow, and dive performance wasn't great, whereas in Il-2, it can keep up with American divers).
The AI don't necessarily perform 'too well', they just get the best out of their planes always. The can accelerate and decelerate on a dime to meet waypoint conditions (to see this, open qmb and try to dogfight with your wingman - if you get on his tail, he will pull "airbrakes" and seems to stop in mid-air in order to get behind you).
So, if you're in the formation, and they start climbing, they will already reach max-climb rate before you've noticed, and started adjusting power and trim, etc.
In most European missions, I had no issues with keeping in place with a formation, but in PF, I struggled to even keep up. If I let the AI fly me to the target, I might run out of fuel first (while the others would land safely).
You can edit cruise speeds for all planes. If you can, find a PoH which shows cruise settings, and use these in Il-2 to figure out cruise speed (remember IAS vs TAS). Otherwise, just use common sense (I tend to multiply each value by 0.75 or 0.8, but some are slower or faster).
Last edited by Luno13; 04-15-2012 at 06:45 PM.
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