Dogfight

[jayrc]

hi all, need some advice for mp dogfights, have a few questions hopefully some will be willing to help.

1. convergence. I know it's personal preference but I think most people have it figured out because I unload on enemy aircraft with minimal damage where when I get hit I loose like both wings I have mine set at 220m both cannon and machine gun.

2. FOV. what fov do most people here fly around with when not shooting at enemy aircraft, and when shooting, what FOV do you prefer?

3. freetrack settings. currently I use small soft curve and 7 sensitivity with 150 smoothing, does this sound right?

4. joystick. I'm using x52 standard with 50 60 70 80 90 100 100 100 etc. for aileron and elevator. 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 for rudder(saitek) pedals 100 everything else.

would really appreciate some help, thanks, Jason

[JtD]

There's nothing you can do to change 1., it is a law of online gaming. The other people ALWAYS do much more damage much more quickly than you do. 220 seems about right, I usually use lower values of around 150, because I don't fire from far away, but it is personal preference.

2. Most zoomed out, biggest field of vision.

3. Coolie hat.

4. I'm using similar settings for the stick, different stick, though, and I'm using higher settings for rudder, but I'm using the twisting of the stick. In your setup, you'll get 1% rudder deflection for 10% pedal travel, 4% for 20, 9% for 30 and so on. My experience is that I will often need deflection around 50% and this is harder to control with your settings than it is with for instance the settings you use for the other axis'.

[jayrc]

what do you mean?

"it is a law of online gaming. The other people ALWAYS do much more damage much more quickly than you do"

they have to play by the same rules

[jayrc]

also could someone clarify what the distance numbers for the icons mean, .50 is that 500 meters? .10= 100 meters?

[Erkki]

Originally Posted by jayrc

hi all, need some advice for mp dogfights

This is easy! Dont do it. "Dogfighting is waste of time" - Erich Hartmann.

[Daniël]

Originally Posted by Erkki

This is easy! Dont do it. "Dogfighting is waste of time" - Erich Hartmann.

Boom and Zoom...

[jayrc]

Originally Posted by jayrc

also could someone clarify what the distance numbers for the icons mean, .50 is that 500 meters? .10= 100 meters?

bump

[Romanator21]

Yes, numbers for icons are given in kilometers. So .10 km is 100 meters.

JTD was joking when he was talking about online players...they always seem to be better than you

Convergence is important, but it's not the magic answer. To get good at shooting, you have to practice. I'm really bad at gunnery myself, so I can't give you feedback there. If you recorded a track, maybe someone can analyze it and give you tips.

To find a convergence that works for you, turn on icons in the difficulty menu. Go into the controls menu and set a key for "toggle icons". Set up a game in the quick mission builder with your favorite plane and some enemies and when flying, cycle the icons until they disappear.

Right as you pull the trigger to shoot, pause the game, and toggle the icons back on, and note the distance. Do this each time you shoot, and make an average. This is YOUR best convergence.

Online, this might be different because human players present different opportunities to shoot. In that case, fly with icons on if possible, but try to ignore them. Record a track and note later when you start to shoot.

My convergence is 200, but I've used 100 with great success. I like to use 700-1000 for ground attack (Il-2, Hs-129, Stuka G-1, etc).

To answer your other questions: 2) Normal, Normal 3) Mouse 4) 10,20,30,40....100 all axes; 2-3 notches of filtering to kill the spikes.

[TinyTim]

1. 120m for planes with wing mounted weapons (if there are machineguns with cannons in the wings - like the Spitfire -, then I set machineguns further out at about 180m). Hold fire till 150m.

2. During shooting the most zoomed one, for everything else the most wide one (I switch between them via joystick hat - forward: zoom in - backward: zoom out).

[IceFire]

Originally Posted by jayrc

what do you mean?

"it is a law of online gaming. The other people ALWAYS do much more damage much more quickly than you do"

they have to play by the same rules

It's a murphy's law kind of thing. It always seems like the other guy is doing way more damage and flying way more effectively than you are. In some cases that is legitimately the case (by skill) but more often then not it's just a human perception thing.

1) I set my convergence at 275 meters and I'm happy with it there. I've tried other settings but this is where I'm most effective.

It's coincidentally roughly the same distance as used by US Navy fighter pilots.... but I arrived at this distance on my own. I went into the QMB, shot up a bunch of aircraft using my preferred types, recorded a track of the sessions, estimated the ranges that I opened fire with reasonable chance of scoring a kill and then set my convergence at that distance.

Obviously you're already seeing that this is a huge personal preference thing. The key is finding out what your preference is as a fighter pilot.

2) I use the game defaults for wide, normal and narrow. Forget the percentages but the defaults work perfectly. For gunnery I go narrow, for dogfighting I go normal/wide and just flying about I use normal.

3) Don't use it so I can't comment.

4) These are my settings for my X-52:

[rts_joystick]
X=0 1 4 9 16 25 36 49 64 81 100 0
Y=0 1 4 9 16 25 36 49 64 81 100 0
Z=0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0
RZ=0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0
FF=0
U=0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0
V=0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 0
1X=1 6 15 24 29 33 42 53 61 86 100 0 0
1Y=0 11 14 23 30 39 40 56 62 71 100 0 0
1Z=0 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 0 0
1RX=0 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 0 0
1RY=0 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 0 0
1RZ=0 7 12 19 26 31 36 44 54 67 92 0 0
1U=0 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 0 0
1V=0 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 0 0

I've bolded the important ones. As you can see...I prefer to have the sensitivity set WAAAY down. I find it makes life a lot easier on me and apparently it's more like the real thing anyways.