How to perform Lag Displacement Roll Attack?

[Laurwin]

Here's my gripes with the manouver.

1. people seem to confuse this manouver with some other manouver like high yoyo. Apparently they are actually two entirely different manouvers basically?

2. This manovuer is really hard to visualize for me, what exactly is the attacker is supposed to do? (with the rolling part of this attack)

3. It would maybe help to understand, if you had a textbook example, which was worked exactly into a 3D animation (or game video for that matter). I tried to search youtube, but didn't really find much understandable examples of lag displacement roll attacks. Here's a picture of the manouver textbook case on page 94, of this web article http://www.virtualpilots.fi/feature/.../inpursuit.pdf


situation would be something like this. Attacker is coming at high speed diving towards a bandit, who is slightly lower than attacker.

bandit sees attacker, and bandit makes a sustained, break turn, towards attacker.
This is the textbook case isn't it?


4. Let's assume that the attacker (you) roll away (!) from the enemy (who is break turning)

Isn't this an obvious question but basically, at that moment in time, when you roll away from the bandit, the attacker cannot see bandit anymore? The defender could easily stop turning predictably like that because attacker can't see him anymore?

5. does the manouver work even if the enemy makes a break turn unsustainably? (as opposed to sustained turn, which I suppose would be better for the bandit, in theory, for energy retention purposes, but you never know)

After all, unsustained turn makes a really tight turn radius, I was wondering if the lag displacement roll allows to adjust to that turn radius?

6. Is the point about unsustainable break turn, redundant though? Because the bandit will have wasted a ton of energy, if he makes a massive turn at the edge of stall.

[MaxGunz]

You roll to keep the target in sight and the best way to learn is through practice, though here I can say dedicated practice with friends can speed up the process.

Either go invulnerable or don't shoot if you use this for cooperative training.

Start by running one plane after the other at about 70%-80% throttle, get to some alt and start circling. The pursuing player then adds 5% throttle and tries to stay behind the slower moving leader while occasionally getting a firing solution.
If 5% is too much, try half that. Crawl before you walk, walk before you run.

You can use yoyos, barrel rolls, whatever works as long as you stay behind your slower moving target. It's a lot easier when you have distance to close and one lesson you learn is there is a too close for any speed difference where the time between possible shots gives the target a chance at grabbing initiative and you don't want that.

Try it in straight line flying but circles is what a lot of targets make. For this training, the lead should not get tricky and especially not go into the vertical until as that is training for something else.

Even being =on average= just 10 kph faster you can begin to learn this.

Go with invulnerable planes and unlimited ammo when you do get down to the gunnery training needed and make sure the target knows to ignore all hits and go all evasive as the training is about learning the mechanics/geometry and is not a better pilot contest.
If you don't know deflection shooting then it's best work out distances and timing on predictable targets until you have that internalized along with the flying.
Deflection is about when and where. You want your shots to arrive at a point where the target will be in the very near future. This is complicated by range and gun type and relative motion of shooter and target. In time you pick up on:
1) judging distance -- harder than it seems
2) judging speeds and relative speeds -- ditto
3) judging shot speed -- this can getcha when you switch guns after a while
4) vertical angle of the shot -- your rounds drop less firing up or down, but not much
5) all of the above together -- like how high relative speed makes your shots effectively faster and the longer the range the more any effects have.

It took me many hours to pick all that up but I had years of flight sim playing and some RL fun (not killing anything) to work it out in.

Last, if you can't get a friend to cooperate in training then get past the mudhen stage and go terrorize noobs on noob servers, but don't stay on the same server for more than a few lessons and don't pick on the same one while you're there. Who knows, maybe one or more will learn if they see how it's done? But get out if they even start to whine, okay? Chat saying "what was that?" is a sign you are learning but it's also your cue to not bag more than one or two more.
And every so often, get your own lessons handed to you on servers you find hard or you'll get soft on easy meat. It's not for penance, honest!

[Laurwin]

Yea, that kind of proficiency could definitely come useful in energy fights vs fighters.

Sometimes, you see bandit fighter going defensive, meanwhile you are zooming towards him with very good smash. You gotta decide though, go for deflection shot, or fly through (conserving your E). If the bandit is any good, he will break hard.

Problem for you now becomes, I go high, but it's like, I'm going TOO FAST LOL. Maybe the lag displacement roll could help in getting an effective shot at the enemy? That, or simply better throttle control and prop control during dives?

You don't exactly learn everything by simply boom&zooming every time. Although it can keep you alive for long time online. Old habits and patterns.

Although you do get an eye for this kind of speed difference (the exercise you proposed for in-game) when driving a car in real life and overtaking somebody on the road, indeed! Too bad my car has pretty much shit acceleration anyway so it's not like I overtake anyone on the road usually, hehe

PS: unless it's like an old granma driving at under-speeds on the highway.

[Janosch]

Originally Posted by MaxGunz

You roll to keep the target in sight

That is a key phrase!

Specific maneuver oriented thinking and presentation, it can be too confusing. I actually had to read and reread about this maneuver and compare it to high yo-yo. And there it was! The key phrases are "lift vector", "maintaining visual contact to your opponent" and "meow."

Instead of thinking about "rolling away", just level your wings before pulling up. Then just look into the direction of opponent, often simply 9 or 3 o'clock, and chances are that you see them the whole time. Of course, it's easy only if you have a huge energy advantage and if your opponent makes a textbook break turn and so on. But if you can maintain visual contact, you can see what the opponent does next and plan ahead.
If your opponent burns lots of energy in the break turn to avoid your attack, while you conserve your own energy, all the better!

The way I see it, this is all simply an application of a boom & zoom attack, since you can sometimes try to get a quick shot at an opponent who's starting a break turn before you pull up.

[Laurwin]

the way I understood it...

you are paving the way, for extra turning room, when you are slightly rolling AWAY from the enemy (what is this madness going away from enemy!?)

but you must simply do it, you must pave the way, for extra turning room (because at high speed, your turn radius will be shit)

You're above your own corner velocity when you're doing this kind of stuff (usually)

-I mean, in the ideal scenario, textbook case, this starts with the attacker performing b&z, on the defender's ass.

-Defender is able to see the attacker, "ooh there comes BUBBA - I'll have to turn into him because that's what Dicta Boelcke says to me"

... attacker has a cunning plan; doesn't waste energy ...

... but momentarily converts some of that velocity, into extra altitude (also this creates momentarily distance separation, between two aircraft - this procedure is creating the turning room required) ...

... but at the "exit ramp'" of barrel roll; cunning attacker converts extra altitude into huge velocity ...

... coming for defender's ass again ...



Why is this manouver sometimes better, than a normal high yoyo?

Does lag displacement roll, sometimes succeed where high yoyo fails? (or would fail)?

You do get very hard deflection shots sometimes with high yoyos, against break turns, NOT very easy shots

Why does lag displacement put you nicely at low angle-off, from bandit's 6 o clock (Im still trying to wrap my head around this part of the manouver, how can you defeat the defender's angles so well...)

Does high yoyo, simply RETAIN TOO MUCH energy? (for some situations?)

[MaxGunz]

This is why I say to start simple in cooperative training with small speed differences. You can learn things that let you go on to bigger speed differences.

edit-add: for one thing, when you learn by doing you don't get hung up over terms.

Remember that rising slows you down, descending speeds you up, any maneuver more than 2G wastes speed. Have patience, don't get suckered into losing your speed advantage over a quick solution that slows you down.

At huge speed differences you can't stay behind without breaking contact for many seconds at a time and as I stated before, you risk the vict.. errr, target getting enough energy to take some initiative on you.

Do the first things before trying to speculate on more advanced tactics.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Host a coop with invulnerable planes, unlimited ammo and ARCADE=1 to show where shots hit. Get someone to fly drone circles (no dodging, this is for TRAINING) at reduced throttle and another to work out staying behind while moving on average a bit faster while getting the occasional shot in.
Until you can do that you simply won't see how to begin to handle more.

Remember to take turns being target and pursuit.

[Woke Up Dead]

"Why is this manouver sometimes better, than a normal high yoyo?
Does lag displacement roll, sometimes succeed where high yoyo fails? (or would fail)?"

I believe there are two reasons.

One, the high yo-yo is a tighter, more aggressive maneuver; the attacker stays closer to the defender and often has to shoot while diving form up high. It's not that hard to dodge a shot and force an overshoot from such an aggressive attack. The lag displacement roll on the other hand puts the attacker further back, on the defender's six or mid-high six and closing; more time for the attacker to set up a shot, more difficult for the defender to create a tough angle. For that reason, you should probably use the high yo-yo when your target is much faster than you; if you lag-roll against a 109 in your I-16, you probably won't catch him despite your initial energy advantage. If you're in a Yak or LaGG though, you probably will.

The second reason I suspect is that a lag displacement more confusing from the point of view of the defender. A high yo-yo is almost as clear in its intention as a hard break towards the defender's six, but in a lag-roll your attacker pulls up early (maybe he didn't see me?), rolls away (maybe he lost me or is distracted by one of my team-mates?), and additionally all those maneuvers are hard to track from inside the cockpit. In the confusion the defender just keeps flying straight.

[majorfailure]

The "roll away from the defender" part got me confused too - got me thinking to let them pass below your aircraft. I'm still not 100% sure I'm doing the textbook maneuvre, but as long as it works what I do, who cares about the textbook. Basically what you do is using your roll rate to change your planes heading - by pointing it roughly upwards, rolling and leveling out again.

[rollnloop]

I think this video explains it pretty well ?

[Janosch]

^ Ohhhhhhhh now I see! Brilliant video! The pilot starts the maneuver before the target passes his gunsight, and that's why rolling away from opponent's turn enables the unbroken visual contact. Things are different and perhaps less aerobatic if you start pulling up after the other guy passes your gunsight - that's usually when you try an initial snapshot with a plane that has lots of cannons. Then it's just a regular nearly vertical climb, roll and see-what-happens-next.