Offline challenges.

[Jumoschwanz]

I have left the four ace Re.2000 vs, four ace 1940 I-16s mission on my QMB for the last few months as a go-to whenever I am on the computer and feel like a flying challenge. It is still a very tough mission to crack and I never know if my Re.2000s will win or not. Maybe it is really a tough mission, or maybe I am not that good a virtual combat pilot anymore, either is possible.....

[Marabekm]

Try this one:

The Hungarians Re.2000s had their most successful day on 9 August 1942. That day, near the village of Davidovka, 16 Ilyushin Il-2s and a similar number of LaGG-3S were intercepted by four Reggianes. The Hungarians downed four LaGGs, suffering the loss of the Re.2000 of Lt Takács, who crash-landed behind his own lines, wounded.

I kept the same number of Re. 2000s, but only did 8 each of the Sturmoviks and Laggs. Not for the faint of heart!!

[JacksonsGhost]

Don't know if this is a challenge for you guys, but I'm having some fun with it:

Three ace I-16 Type 5 against three ace Ki-27 Ko and two ace Ki-27 Otsu.

Start at 250 meters on the Smolensk map as the I-16.

I also used Hayate's great Chinese skins for the I-16s to give it a Chinese vs Japanese historical flavour!

[Jumoschwanz]

Marabekm, Thank-you for the bit of Re.2000 history. I had many days of fun flying them against those dastardly I-16s and got to the point where I could win consistently. The trick that usually worked was zooming and booming the I-16s, especially early on while they were distracted with your wing-men.

And thank-you Jackson's Ghost, I will try your scenario with the I-16s vs. Jap planes and see how it goes.

With the summer season here I am not flying as much, but there are still rainy days here and there that see me back in the seat.

The new 4.14 patch has made the AI a little better in my opinion, or maybe I am just getting older and worse at flying, but it has been fun trying things with the new patch, flying the MIg3ud vs. a 109f2/20mm is interesting this morning, the 109f2 seems to be the better aircraft but I can beat it with the Mig using old-age and treachery.

S!

[Jumoschwanz]

For quite a while now I have been filling the entire allied team in the QMB with 1943 P-47s and flying them against the axis side filled with all Bf-110s and eight 1943 FW-190s. Sometimes I will swap a group of four oddball aircraft into the allied side to see what they can do, currently trying out four 1943 P-39 aircraft.

I like 1943 for the WWII air-war as I think it was the most evenly balanced from the technology view, nobody had a large advantage in aircraft performance.

I have run this scenario too many times to remember or count, and I can never guess which side will win. If I stay alive until my ammo runs out it is always a good thing though and usually means a win for my side. The German aircraft all having 20mm cannons means you can not really afford to take a hit. The P-47 is tough though and I have been able to keep fighting after being hit, but it is not as much fun or as effective to fight in a P-47 that is down on power or is missing some of it's controls or wing area.
I usually load the P-47 with a light fuel load and "extra ammunition" for the guns, trying to not put in too much fuel that the plane has less performance, but not so little fuel that if I get some holes in it all the fuel will drain out and I am eliminated by running out of fuel. The tanks seal up, but not until some or a lot of fuel is lost.

The tail gunners on the 110 can take out your engine or pilot easily, so you need good gunnery and tactics to hit the 110 with your fifty-caliber guns from any direction except the rear. And of course if you get the attention of two or four of the fw-190s then you are going to be kept busy long enough that your AI wingmates will be fighting without your help.

The best tactic I have found is to fly off away from the battle until the AI calls it has spotted the enemy, then to turn back towards the battle and get as much altitude as possible, making fast passes on as many aircraft as possible. This gets them chasing you instead of your AI. After you get so many after you then you end up diving to the deck and evading their fire while creating opportunities to shoot at them and take them down.

You have to do your part and keep a lot of the axis AI busy at once with your P-47, if you spend too much time fighting just one or two aircraft then your AI will have too much to do and will usually be massacred.

I set all the AI to ACE and run the two sides together at 1000 meters altitude on a clear day.

[Igo kyu]

I do not fly full realism.

My eyes and monitors get dark with age, so I use the icons to spot distant aircraft. I don't appreciate being shot through clouds that I can't see through, so they're out (I'm using the ?4.11.? that comes with the Ultimate edition, I'd like something later, but it's what I have). I was concerned to find that the P40 would break up in level flight, so vibration destruction is off.

I generally fly the auto-generated careers. I generally try to use different aircraft in different stages of a career.

I did notice that the Yak 1 was almost helpless against the IAR 80 if you are looking for a difficult fight, though the i16/24 seems to be a better match.

[Jumoschwanz]

Originally Posted by Igo kyu

I do not fly full realism.

My eyes and monitors get dark with age, so I use the icons to spot distant aircraft. I don't appreciate being shot through clouds that I can't see through, so they're out (I'm using the ?4.11.? that comes with the Ultimate edition, I'd like something later, but it's what I have). I was concerned to find that the P40 would break up in level flight, so vibration destruction is off.

My eyes are not the best anymore either. I don't think there is anything wrong with using icons for flying offline. ten to twenty years ago the best IL2 pilots and best servers were all hard-settings. It was a joy to be able to ID the aircraft at a distance by the silhouette as real pilots did. I do not believe the P40 has any problem in level flight. In the patch when the p40 first appeared, which was probably over 15 years ago, it would break up in a dive at a certain speed, and it was fun to get p40 pilots to follow your bf109 in a dive if they got on your tail and have them explode. No matter what the patch I destroyed a lot of over-eager pilots of Russian aircraft by baiting them into following my fw190 in a dive.

The type of aircraft has no bearing on victory in aerial combat though, as every aircraft does something better than the aircraft it is flown against, and a smart, educated pilot will know these things and be able to use them to an advantage.

The wonderful thing about the hard settings servers back in the day was that you could get the element of surprise, bouncing enemy aircraft from altitude, even if you were in a slow aircraft. I shot down jets with the I-16 this way. Also I used to fix the 20mm cannon in the nose of the He-111 bomber to straight ahead and sit in it's nose and bounce allied fighters with it and shoot them down, it was fun to knock down fighter planes with a bomber. Lots of great memories. You can punch "jumoschwanz" into YouTube and find the channel I set up for old IL2 tracks I saved, some of the tracks are almost 20 years old.

[Igo kyu]

Originally Posted by Jumoschwanz

My eyes are not the best anymore either. I don't think there is anything wrong with using icons for flying offline. ten to twenty years ago the best IL2 pilots and best servers were all hard-settings. It was a joy to be able to ID the aircraft at a distance by the silhouette as real pilots did. I do not believe the P40 has any problem in level flight. In the patch when the p40 first appeared, which was probably over 15 years ago, it would break up in a dive at a certain speed, and it was fun to get p40 pilots to follow your bf109 in a dive if they got on your tail and have them explode. No matter what the patch I destroyed a lot of over-eager pilots of Russian aircraft by baiting them into following my fw190 in a dive.

I think it was more recent than that, I remember the MiG3 mission in the original where your wingman would dive and die before getting down to the level of the 109s, that was long before the issue I was talking about, and since it happened at high speed maybe fair enough. The change happened when the new difficulty panel showed up, maybe in "1946"?, before there were two pages of difficulties that you could turn on or off for each career, the new difficulties have five pages. The particular difficulty switch I'm talking about is labelled "Flutter Effect", with that on, the P40 can get very near to flutter speed in level flight, and you have what seems like less than five seconds from onset to lethal explosion.

The type of aircraft has no bearing on victory in aerial combat though, as every aircraft does something better than the aircraft it is flown against, and a smart, educated pilot will know these things and be able to use them to an advantage.

The IAR is AI only, and it seems to me to be both faster and faster turning than the early Yaks, the I16 can outturn it though. If you are looking for a challenge, the IAR against an early Yak might be worth a try.

The wonderful thing about the hard settings servers back in the day was that you could get the element of surprise, bouncing enemy aircraft from altitude, even if you were in a slow aircraft. I shot down jets with the I-16 this way. Also I used to fix the 20mm cannon in the nose of the He-111 bomber to straight ahead and sit in it's nose and bounce allied fighters with it and shoot them down, it was fun to knock down fighter planes with a bomber. Lots of great memories. You can punch "jumoschwanz" into YouTube and find the channel I set up for old IL2 tracks I saved, some of the tracks are almost 20 years old.

I never played online, I'm almost addicted to time-slowing in combat, and I don't usually watch Youtube because of the cookies they demand to set.