Engines are too strong and reliable.

[majorfailure]

Originally Posted by sniperton

You're probably right, but it happened to me a couple of times that I attacked an AI from a climb, that is, from his absolute dead six fully covered, as I believed, by the bottom of his fuselage, and still he broke away as soon as I arrived in firing distance (<300). He may have seen me curving in, but I seriously doubt that he could see me in the last hundred meters of my approach. Either he's got a monstruous rubber-neck to lean out and look back (as you suggest), or he's so clever as to count till ten after I disappeared from his sight...

Either possibility makes them more unlike human pilots.

Originally Posted by Laurwin

good tactic which works in multiplayer at least, would be to make a diving attack from above and behind.

Dive below the AI, and shoot him when you start zoom climbing, and then continue zooming up.

Adolf Galland used that tactic quite often in Battle of Britain.

Have tried it and it works sometimes, but not as often as I'd think a seemingly unsuspecting enemy would be shot down. I in the position of the aatacked would either not see my enemy coming until too late or if I would, then I'd react early - because else I'd risk getting my timing to the break wrong.