Just when you think you've got the hang of it...

[Raven Morpheus]

Hey all

Ever have one of those days (or weeks in my case) where you think you've grasped whatever it is you've been grappling with for days, weeks, months, years, and then it all just falls to pieces?

Well that's how I'm feeling about IL2 at the moment.

I've just been playing through a handful of the campaigns I'm currently running, doing 1 mission of each at a time, and I've just done mission 4 of Facing the Wind, mission 4 of 4 days in June (Battle of Midway campaign), I'm on mission 3 (or 4) of Dust Devils (P38 North Africa campaign) having tried and failed it. I'm also doing a Wake Island DGEN campaign, I'll get to that in a minute...

My Facing the Wind mission saw me not doing too badly until it came to land, but I caught the wire and it bounced me onto the carrier deck and obviously the prop and undercarriage were totaled. My 4 days in June battle saw me and half a dozen other F4F's swamped by the Japanese air fleet (as per real life) and I ended up shooting a B5N until it was smoking with black smoke but I didn't get the kill (seemingly AI can fly planes that have no engine running!!!!), and I was forced down with aileron damage and barely managed to crash land, luckily I bailed on the ground just before the plane exploded!

The Dust Devils mission I'm stuck on was going fine right till the end, where upon getting back to the airfield I was notified there's "bandits at 9 o'clock" - I've just landed and so of course I have to take off again. Then my screen goes all black and I have to switch to F2 view but end up crashing into a mountain!!

Then there's the aforementioned Wake Island DGEN campaign I just started. 1st mission. 40 enemy fighters vs 2 F4F's! WTF!!!! Seriously?! Outnumbered 20-1 what are you supposed to do other than what I did which was get turned into Swiss cheese and forced into landing!?!

It's bad enough that I still can't nail landing 100% (I've spent the last couple of days in QMB doing some takeoff/landing practice in a F4U-1D and seemingly bouncing off carrier decks, bouncing off Midway's runway and crashing all the time, until tonight I finally managed to nail a landing on Midway), but all of the above has just ruined my enjoyment of IL2! It's just not fun when you spend your time either getting shot to pieces and/or crashing!!

[RPS69]

He He He! Landing at the start could be tricky. Landing on a carrier is always a challenge. Pick an IL-2 or a hurricane, and learn your way on landing approachs with those aircraft first.

Corsair are landing nightmares, so learn to land before with nice to handle aircraft.

Also, if your enemy crahs lands after your plane exploded, kill is not awarded. Dead pilots can't clame kills. The historical bug is that exploded planes, with pilots alive do clame their kills!

[MaxGunz]

If you're going to be switching planes like clothes then don't expect to be so competitive with any of them.

To get landings down, make a full mission that sets you up pre-approach and replay it until you've got it down to reflexes. Then later on you fly to that approach and make good landings. Pacific Fighters has just such a mission to practice carrier landings. IRL pilots will do touch and go as a real form of that.

If you get even half serious, you can get pretty good at IL-2.

[Raven Morpheus]

I tend to practice with the F4U on Midway. I had, or so I thought, gotten landings down pretty well, at least I had when I was using my Saitek X45 stick. But just recently, especially since moving to my Saitek X52 Pro, I can't seem to land the F4U on Midway most of the time. Problem is if I go back to using my Saitek X45 (to see if it is the stick that is making the difference) I can't use the throttle block because it's got a dodgy connection (well the connection in the joystick block is dodgy, but still means I can't reliably use the throttle block), thus if I go with the throttle from my X52 Pro and the stick from my X45 I lose the 3 modes function (the X45 has the modes button on the throttle block, and the X52 Pro has it on the stick!!)

Midway, apart from the fact it's a short runway, is actually quite a good test map for landings in my opinion, because you can take off, then circle around to the left, getting up to >200mph in the F4U, and cross the tip of the 2nd island (which is on your left) and be fairly well lined up with the runway and at about 180mph.

As for being "competitive" with a single plane - I defy anyone to be "competitive" with 20-1 odds! Or if for some reason your screen goes black (not a blackout btw) and you have to switch to another view whilst unknowingly heading for the side of a mountain!?!


Anyhow I tend to find that IL2 becomes boring after a while if I just stick to 1 plane, however the missions I played the other night just really were not enjoyable and have to some extent put me off IL2 for the moment.

The very fact that the B5N I caused to vent black smoke, and whilst I was watching it, after I had been forced down, had a prop that wasn't even moving, but was still flying perfectly fine is also very annoying - that should have been a kill but the plane was still flying in formation as though it was indestructible!?!

[MaxGunz]

Sorry to hear about the stick problems. I guess you worked on the sensitivity sliders but how about filter on the pitch axis?

If it's a wonky stick then the red and green squares on the sensitivity screen should show where that happens. It's funny what we put up with when we don't know.

I have a regular X52 twisty stick. The twist doesn't always center. Is the X45 a twisty? I've heard the X45 rudder is a rocker.

Otherwise these are my best landing tips:

Are you approaching at 100% rpm and low power? It's a great way to almost hang in the air as well as lose alt without so much speed gain. You can set your rise or drop rate via throttle right down to near stall.

If you're having the roll over and die just over the runway problem then use rudder instead of side stick to correct roll. Don't wait for the ball, act proportional to wings against the horizon, rudder away from the dropping wing. If you land fast enough to use ailerons then you're going too fast.

[IceFire]

Glad you're trying out Facing the Wind! It's been a while since I put that together but it was a lot of fun and yes I destroyed quite a few F4U's building the campaign... took me a long while to get the hang of carrier landings. I'm not sure if I'll ever have a complete success rate.

Some days it seems like you have it and then, like you say, nothing works

[rollnloop]

Raven, Ai was changed in the last few years, today "average" is a better shooter than the old "ace", so if you play old campaigns, you'll get your ass spanked every mission, thank to team daidalos.

Stick to campaigns written in 2013/2014 and you have more hope that campaign builders have taken the new sniping ability of AI into account.

Edit: you can also make another install, up to 4.09/4.10, and play older campaigns. Some thinks 4.09 was the most enjoyable version of the game, anyway. I don't, and prefer to play newer campaigns, but to each his own

[Raven Morpheus]

Originally Posted by MaxGunz

Sorry to hear about the stick problems. I guess you worked on the sensitivity sliders but how about filter on the pitch axis?

I have played with the sliders but I went back to default as no changes I made to the sliders seemed to help.

I'm not even 100% sure it is a stick issue, but as I said since moving to my X52 Pro from the X45 I seem to have gotten worse at landing. Maybe it's because the X52 Pro is more sensitive than my X45 was?

It's fine when I'm in the air though, in fact it's far better than the X45 in that respect.

I'm also wondering if I'm getting a tiny bit of input lag, as I've recently moved my X52 Pro to a USB port on an Akasa addon USB hub I've installed in my PC case. Problem is the X52 Pro's cable is a bit short for putting it in one of the motherboard USB ports, which are all round the back...

Are you approaching at 100% rpm and low power?

Check. Typically on the Midway map with a F4U I'm coming over the fishing boats on the shore of the island at about 130mph, with about 20-30% throttle and 100% prop pitch. The plane takes off at 120mph and I've read and tested the theory that you should be landing at just about take off speed, and I've found that to be true, at least until recently.

If you're having the roll over and die just over the runway problem then use rudder instead of side stick to correct roll. Don't wait for the ball, act proportional to wings against the horizon, rudder away from the dropping wing. If you land fast enough to use ailerons then you're going too fast.

Yep trying that also.

What seemed to be happening recently is that I get to about to touchdown, and yes a wing dips (usually the left) and then I try to correct with the rudder and I seem to make it worse or at least rudder doesn't help.

Either that or I touch down but bounce and then again it all goes wrong.

Carrier landings I catch one of the cables and then belly flop.

Just seems that successful landings recently have been rather few and far between.

Originally Posted by IceFire

Some days it seems like you have it and then, like you say, nothing works

Exactly. This is precisely how it has become.

Originally Posted by rollnloop

Raven, Ai was changed in the last few years, today "average" is a better shooter than the old "ace", so if you play old campaigns, you'll get your ass spanked every mission, thank to team daidalos.

Stick to campaigns written in 2013/2014 and you have more hope that campaign builders have taken the new sniping ability of AI into account.

Edit: you can also make another install, up to 4.09/4.10, and play older campaigns. Some thinks 4.09 was the most enjoyable version of the game, anyway. I don't, and prefer to play newer campaigns, but to each his own

Well I'm sticking to 4.12. I like some of the newer features in it. As for AI, I just opened the last Facing the Wind mission I did (mission 4) in FMB and the AI seem to be set to rookie (perhaps the FMB changes them all to that?). Tried opening the Wake Island mission I did in FMB but I couldn't see what the AI was set to, I'm assuming that's because it's a DGEN mission.

Can't say I have much of a problem with the AI when it's fairly even numbers (apart from getting on target vs fighters but that's just my lack of skill). It was just the sheer number of them in the Facing the Wind and Wake Island missions I did, 40-2 and 40-6 odds, that was a problem. Short of leaving the area I stood no chance. I'm surprised that I even got what I consider to be a kill in the Facing the Wind mission (the B5N I keep mentioning)!

[Janosch]

DGen has always managed to goof up at least one thing per mission, such as bomber escort mission having enemy fighters start behind bombers, while player starts on ground, and having player fly through the worst AAA zones on a patrol flight.

Was the damaged B5N the formation leader? I've noticed that other planes in the formation might follow their leader even if the leader's engines are dead! That way, it appears that the B5N is indeed flying in a formation with no problems.

For F4U landings, it may be a good idea to record tracks when practicing, so once you get a good landing, you can view the track carefully to see what your speed, sink rate and so on were, and on a failed attempt, you can see what went wrong. Avoid taking 100% fuel - took me a while to figure this out when I was practicing.
F4U has a big hook. I find Zero landings much more difficult. When Zero bounces, it easily glides over all the remaining wires.

[MaxGunz]

Raven if you want, try spending time seeing how slow you can fly.

No, really, do it well up in alt and even while climbing. Staying stable right down near the wire, 140-150kph in a P-40 or 109 took me a good bit of practice long ago. It helps train in stick twisting without side movement which does take discipline. Close to stall, aileron is death. The aileron down side (wing you'd be raising) crosses into stall and it's all over from there. Practicing at alt, you recover and review yourself the try again.

It's like slow-drag on a motorcycle only 3D and no one laughing.

With the X52 it is easy to rest your hand and arm on the stick. Too easy by far. I had 2 good flight sim teachers get me off of that and the benefit is very real. The only thing worse than using the stick to hold your arm up is the stick death grip that oh yeah I do find myself doing in tough situations!

I filter my axes not just to eliminate digital flutter but to smooth my own muscle tremors, especially on pitch that I run 50% filter on. The effect is good for me and really only more than slight with fast large stick deflections that will normally cause speed loss anyway.