Small Bf-110 combat report and some nice details i spotted

[Blackdog_kt]

Just flown a sortie in the 110 after turning the forest detail even lower. It was mostly playable, in fact more than my previous attempts (i7 920 @ 2.7 GHz, 3GB RAM, Ati 4890 1GB), despite the ever present stutters.
By the way, it seems like a conspiracy, it will decide to have a fit and freeze only when you're lining up a sweet gun pass or are about to make a nice 3-point landing...i haven't landed a single plane yet without some form of damage incurred
Anyway, that's not my main point here, just providing a frame of reference.

So i set up the Calais bomber intercept mission, i got myself in a single 110 and set the opposition to two Sunderlands.
At the same time i would pause, alt+tab and tune my Freetrack settings, which ended in finally having a setup i'm comfortable with (i migrated recently when my TIR4 Pro died a couple of months ago, so i wasn't exactly familiar with setting up Freetrack), something that took a considerable amount of "fighting the controls" out of the overall experience and helped me fly a lot better.
I also mapped the "view instruments" command to a button on the base of my sidewinder precision pro stick (the other 3 are gunsight view and increase/decrease prop pitch), something which helped immensely with managing the engines correctly with CEM and temperature effects enabled.



So, after making a few passes and damaging the enemy flying boats (i'd love to fly that beast in a future expansion by the way), they started descending during their exit from the target area. One of those beasts almost got into a scissors fight with me, which ended with me raking his fuselage with cannon rounds, barely missing the cockpit.
By the time i was done admiring my handiwork in external view they had gained some distance, so i went into a long, shallow dive to catch up with them. The leader was lower, below a cloud around 500-700m of altitude, with the wingman following him at around 1200m. I decided to get the low one first, settled into the attack and i came in high and fast from his high 7. Apparently, i should have done so earlier since that helped me score cannon hits on its wing and engines, the beast caught on fire and the crew jumped.
Pushing the props to high RPM and the throttles forward i zoomed back up and after a similar pass i got the remaining flying boat as well.
I roughly set my repeater compass on a direct course back to base, pulled back on the power and started a long, shallow and fast descend. The dreaded stutters struck again during landing, ending in broken landing gear.

Overall a very enjoyable sortie (just flying back to base for about 10 minutes or so gives you a lot of stuff to do and monitor, it's not just wasted time anymore), totally reinforcing my belief that once they patch away the stutters this is going to be a totally awesome simulator.



Among all this, i saw some very nice little details.



First of all, if flying with full CEM and temp effects enabled, you can't be looking at your instruments all the time during combat but you also have to keep your engines healthy.
That's why we have that little transparent window showing us the position of the controls and that's why it's not tied to the realism settings: it's a way to simulate that a pilot would just reach out and feel the throttle's position to judge if he's within the permissible manifold pressure by experience, just like we don't look at our shifter lever when changing gears in our cars: "We're below 3000 meters, so with the throttle there i should be getting between max continuous and 30-minute climb power. Good enough until i can take a look at the gauges to adjust it with more precision and it won't blow the engines away in seconds."
Also, the values for continuous, 30 minute and 1 minute RPM and MP are clearly marked on the 110's instruments.
Furthermore, due to the nature of the Luftwaffe props (they are not constant speed props and require constant adjustment to maintain RPM) this whole CEM thing becomes even more difficult (and more satisfying too once you get the hang of it).

Well, a lot of people lament the external sounds but the internal ones are not only dynamic, they are useful as well because of being dynamic. After a few minutes of flying i would judge my MP by looking at the throttle position in the info window, but for the RPM i was tuning the engines purely by sound.
I don't know if the binaural audio made it to the release and gave me an advantage for flying with headphones, but it's definitely possible to keep your engines running well and powerful by ear alone. The sound's dynamic nature was especially noticeable when throttling way back during the descent with the props pulled back a little, they started making a slow-droning sound due to the windmilling effect.



Second nice touch i spotted confirms the sick levels of attention to detail. While cruising back to base i saw that ammo counter on the 110 and it indicated around 40-50 rounds left. With the plane in a stable, more or les trimmed cruise, i zoomed in on it, kept the trigger pressed and watched it count down to zero, at which point two red lights came on.
Now i remembered someone mentioning on these here forums that the cannon ammo in the 110 came in 60-round drums, so the little masochist in me was wondering just how far this goes.
I opened up the radio commands menu and tried to find if it's possible to order the radioman/gunner to change them. After being unable to find it and squinting to make out the command menu with the info panel overlayed on top of it (mental note: move/resize that window so that i doesn't obscure the radio menu) i was about to call it quits and assume that the full round complement is loaded in one magazine a la IL2:1946 and that i just happened to catch a glimpse of the ammo counter as i was about to run out.

Imagine my surprise when at that exact moment the left red light turned off. Could it be? I didn't want to press the trigger and spoil the suspense just yet so i waited a bit more and voila, the right hand light turned off too. I zoomed in on the instrument and what do you know, both counters indicated 60 fresh rounds, i pressed the triggers and i had cannon fire again. They actually modeled the gunner reloading those drums in mid-flight
This could have very interesting implications in combat, for example if your gunner is wounded/killed he can't change the magazines for you and you'll have to make do with just the machine guns.



Finally, after my not so successful landing i went to external view, zoomed in on the 110's nose and started firing to see the muzzle flashes up close. As i turned the camera around and the plane came to rest in a relatively nose down position i could see the impact points for the rounds a few hundred meters in the distance. And then it happened. Tracer ricochets. Needless to say i kept firing, the effect is very well done and seems sufficiently real due to the well-adjusted frequency of the ricochets (not too often but definitely observable) and the believable directions the rounds go off to. It looks particularly good with tracers that have smoke, like the cannon rounds.

And that's it for today i guess. Sorry for the long post, but it's nice to discover so many new things every single time i fly just one friggin' sortie. All this game needs is a steady 30 FPS, nothing more

EDIT: The gunner also calls out contacts in your rear quarter, but as with most radio messages in the game it needs some refinement. Whenever i overtook the flying boats he would say 'Skipper, Sunderlands at X meters" and other similar things. It's useful, but it would be even better if he also called out their position (eg, "5 o'clock high") instead of just their altitude.

[addman]

Interesting observations there. I love flying the 110 even though there's a lot to keep track of when flying CEM it's also one of the more pleasant planes to fly in the game. Also, I LOVE THE CEM! This is truly one or even two steps beyond IL-2.

[Skarphol]

Inspired by your report, I took on allmost the same mission; put myself in a 110 against 2 Sunderlands. No other planes were in this mission.

There are some weird things about the Sunderland's behaviour in this game:
- After a few shots to the #2 engine of the first one, the crew bailed out
- I gave chase to the second one, and it started a series of rolls, so fast that I think the 110 would have had problems keeping up. I chose to fly level and steady behind the huge flying boat instead.
- After a few hits in the #2 engine, also this crew bailed.
- I cheked up on the first plane again, and it flew happily along on one wing:


- I went back to the second, and it flew slow circles, loosing heigt rather slowly, while flying allmost knife-edge.
- After a while the starboard wingtip hit the water and broke off. The rest of the plane flew on, knife-edge, for a few hundred meters before it chrashed into water and disappeared instantly.

After quiting the mission, I was told I had damaged the Sunderlands 4% each. But number of Sunderlands shot down was 0.

This was not too convincing. But overall, I love the game.

Skarphol

[JG52Uther]

Great report Blackdog!
Not had much time in the 110 yet,because I am concentrating on the 109. I flew a mission 6 109's against 15 Blenheims,and took a few hits.Flying all the way back from the English coast to France at low level,trying to manage the engine,the canopy off,and holes in the windscreen was awesome,especially watching the fuel run out and the red light come on!
Finally made it back for my first perfect landing in CoD!
My next step will be to turn the overheat controls on, just to make it a bit more difficult

[Blackdog_kt]

Overheat is not that hard to manage, as long as you accept that you won't be running the engine flat-out all the time. I never use emergency power except in short bursts or, well, emegcencies

I use 1.35 Ata for the 109 as per the manual and work the prop to keep the RPM needle on or below the red triangle that marks the end of the normal range, but it won't break immediately if i push 1.42 Ata and 2700 RPM for a few seconds (never exceed RPM is 3000, so you have a big safe margin).

Similarly with the 110, i have mapped a key to switch to instrument panel view and it's very useful. It even over-rides your head-tracking device if you have one and it's easy to use: as long as you keep pressing it your view is locked to the instruments, the moment you release it you return your previous view.

On the 110, i use the RPM and Ata marked with the "d" letter on the instruments as my max continuous setting. The one marked with "30" is, evidently enough, power that you can use for 30 minutes (probably for the climb) and the one marked with "1" is usable for one minute. It's a bit more of a handful than the 109 because the values are a bit close to each other, but as long as you keep it in the range from a bit below "d" until midway to "30" you will not have any problems at all.

Absolute precision is not required because you might be a bit higher on the settings one moment and lower on the next so it evens out temperature-wise, plus altitude and airflow changes (airspeed helps cooling) further complicate things.

I just set my rads to full open for take-off, climb and any length of high-power scenario like combat. When i have the time to take a look, i watch the needles and fine tune it a bit. It's just about making a habit to check the needles periodically, just like you do with all your other instruments. You don't look at your compass in the middle of a dogfight and neither do you have to look at the temp gauges, as long as you've kept the engine running well up to that point and check the gauges whenever you make power changes that will stay that way for a long time (ie, if you just throttle up/down around your main setting in a fight it's no big deal, it's constant changes that matter most) it will be fine.

It's not necessary to worry about absolute precision. Of course, during the dive your RPMs will rise above the limit or when applying power you will go past the maximum continuous setting sometimes, but that will not kill the engine immediately. You still have to correct it, but it doesn't have to be an instantaneous correction.

Like i said before, listen to it because it talks to you. No matter if you like or dislike the sounds, the in-cockpit ones are very useful for tuning your engines.

Mind you, that's all for German injected engines. I tried flying the Hurricane and despite the easier constant speed propeller, i can't get it to run smooth no matter what...it always coughs and sputters, especially at altitude, but i think this has something to do with the way the mixture control is displayed.

In the real one, rich was back and lean was forward. In the game it works that way too in the virtual cockpit, but on the engine controls info window that shows the position of your sliders it seems to reverse from time to time. This confused me to the point that i didn't know what to press for lean and what for rich, so maybe that's why i couldn't run it smooth.