Bf 109 and Mixture

[Feuerfalke]

Originally Posted by bomath

My point: complex engine management is just something for the MS FlightSim guys, obsessed to cheat themselves into believing that they really can fly a plane, if faced with a situation. Yeah right... The bad part? Because of the CEM somebody that casually flies a Bf109-G6 A/S can be chased and hunted down by a *theoretically* slower plane, like LaGG, because the LaGG player learned the quirks of the game. So then I ask you, gentlemen: is this really simulation, or just adds to the fact that it's only a game and you can "win" by robotically typing some predefined keysets, memorized by heart and not really calculated?
It's as useless as the separate engine start... It might be realistic, but it just substracts from the fun. Do remember, it's a game and nobody pays you to memorize sequences.
Finally, the last thing that hurts everyone here, lurking to find out sooner some info about the next upcoming patch or the potential Korea sim: each and every "feature" takes time to research and program. Does anybody benefit from this delay? Maybe only the MS guys, programing the CFS4...

Is it really THAT easy? If you want less realism, you always have the option to disable CEM. For those of us who want complex engine management, to modell the flaws of some machines and the difficulties the pilots had during WW2 to use them effectively, this comment is really what you said: YOUR POINT.

If I were you, I wouldn't be so self-confident to call this personal opinion anything close to the common view of the IL2-players, though!

[Crumpp]

while others that were fitted with automatic systems perform better if you do it manually

I wonder why this is the case?

[Bobb4]

Remembering your fuel mixture, prop pitch setting and supercharger heights is what makes this game great.
On ADw we fly ultra realistic...
I would have it no other way.

[bomath]

Well, nobody should stay between you and your happiness to click 7-8 keys even if that doesn't accomplish anything but making the "simulation" work as intended, ergo a game where you need to press those 7-8 keys just to make it work.
I suppose from now on it's clear that there are some strong opinions here (which came from the guys used to... press buttons), so the rest of the conversation is just for the sake of it, 'cause I agree that is OK to disagree; at least until I'm going up on a server which (e.g.) enforces the use of CEM. It's a least a nuissance, because on HL you can hardly come about a server which doesn't. I've played this game since 1.02, and it became (sorry, but that's the truth) bloated with conventions and tricks that you need to keep notes of, even if you'd take only a few weeks of pause. Does anybody remember how hard was to keep up-to-date with the whole plethora of add-on instalations? At least the smartest move was to launch an undivided (after that) DVD with 1946, which I run to get even if I had all the content on it.
Does anybody happen to have heard about a Russian guy named Pavlov? He kept around him a soul, and succeeded in making it happy just by turning on a red bulb. Problem is that I don't wanna be forced to jubilate like the pack of red-bulb lovers, but that's the norm online (and sniffed/frowned upon if one dares to say anything against that, much like the case here). And you'd be surprised, but there are a lot of guys that use CEM just because they're forced to comply to that stuck-up rule, or else be banished to precious few and unpopulated servers. It's just a tradition that prevents new players to hop onboard and this doesn't bode well for the future sales, nor for the continuation of this great sim.
The point where nobody tried to answer: why waste valuable resources in implementing a finicky thing that's a pain in the a$$ to use? I fail to see the reason, especially since the documentation about it is kinda scarce and mostly comes in the form of predefined tables obtained by experiment? The PDF docs that came with the game (I don't remember, about 5-6 years ago when it was implemented) present just a generalization, vague norms for some specific planes and not even then as an algorithm, just the info about magnetos, sketchy things about mixture richness etc.

[Feuerfalke]

Odd. Why do you think so many servers on HL have enforced CEM if nobody wants it?
Only to turn down rookies? Well, I honestly doubt that many rookies are rushed away because they do have to select their different engines for startup in while using one of the 6 or 8 multi-engined planes in 1946. And Prop-Pitch? Honestly, what rookie does care about that? If you don't fight the aces, you can very well survive without changing these settings (most aces I know have the settings 70 or 100% prop-pitch only, anyway).

I can hardly believe that these 3 or 4 buttons turn down any rookie who is willing to learn to deal with gyro-effects, turbulences, drag, loosing control-surfaces, engine damage, fuel leaks, carrier-takeoffs, different bomb-munitions, bomb-delays and rocket-delays, etc.


On another note the very few planes that have mixture-settings-controls were in the initial release, whereas planes with "press W for unlimited afterburner" were added later on. There is even a settings for using automatic radiators on planes who didn't have such a system. (and radiators only cause light drag, which is not nearly as devastating on flight-performance as the real things, e.g. for the 109.

As I posted before: There is always the option to disable those and there are many servers without CEM. It's just a fact that if you are searching for realistic servers with realistic missions and settings, there is simply no way around getting those few keys memorized or mapped to a joystick. Maybe you should give Falcon4 a try?

[Bobb4]

[QUOTE=bomath;36505]Well, nobody should stay between you and your happiness to click 7-8 keys even if that doesn't accomplish anything but making the "simulation" work as intended, ergo a game where you need to press those 7-8 keys just to make it work.
QUOTE]
Pulling into a steep climb trailing black smoke with tracers flying all around is awesome... Realizing the black smoke is not some deadly hit by flak or that fighter you shot past and are about to barrel roll onto, but your failure to adjust your mixture feels real. Gives you a sense of immersion that fly arcade (easy) cannot do.
It took me between twenty and thirty attempts to land a plane when I first got Il2 (original). When I bought Pacific Fighters I took months to be able to land onto a stationary carrier.
Falcon 4 and Lock On also took their toll. I will not even talk about chopper landings in Armed Assault, not really a sim but... Each brought a sense of accomplishment.
And I would hate to lose that. Try flying BoB2 Wings of Victory and you will see what I mean. All the eye candy in the world does not change the fact that I can max my throttle and fly till I am shot down. My engine does not overheat, I hardly ever stall and I down an average of two planes a sortie.

We on the (South African SGS Server) take new pilots and train them how to fly. Planes like the 109 need little CEM and are ideal starter planes. We walk them through landing, take-off, CEM, dogfighting, deflection shooting and Situational Awareness.
We have a policy of landing lights or smoke that allows new pilots to fly on our servers and get a feel of the game without being butchered. Obviously once they enter the realms of ADW, Birds of Prey and other full real servers it is a free-for-all.

Sorry about the long winded response, but this is a sim I am passionate about and I love the total immersion of it.