Am I the only one who is bothered by drastically one-sided historical dogfight servers? I don't mind a normal disadvantage, but PTO setups with the P-38J vs A6M3, Ki-43, Ki-61 aren't worth it. Perhaps if the Ki-61 were a variant with 20mm in the cowl...
Flew the P-38 and landed 6 kills. Switched to blue out of sympathy and did get one 38, watched another dive to the enemy field at full speed to vulch, ran away for 15km, turned around and dove again at the field to vulch, rinse, repeat. Flying like that when your aircraft is vastly superior is a sin.

Other early/mid-war PTO setups are almost as bad...

Blegh.

Shameless plug for my I-16 campaign. This time the odds will be stacked against you:

It's called realism.

"Flying like that when your aircraft is vastly superior is a sin."

No, fighting the other guy's fight is a sin.

In spite of the obvious advantages of the US planes over most Japanese planes, a look at server stats will show that most people in this sim have no idea how to use those advantages. If you can't catch the smart ones, just go after all the other goobers TnB'ing on the deck. Not long ago I watched 3 or 4 F6F's dive down to the deck and start maneuvering with Zekes within spitting distance of the enemy field. Of course, in very short order most of the Hellcat drivers were shot down.

y'know, zeros are slow, doesnt matter if you are on the deck or at 30,000ft

may as well be slower at 30,000ft and bounce some 38s, dont think it cant be done in game or wasnt IRL sir

zero still holds climb, turn, roll(M3, depending on speed), and slight accel over the 38 at any alt

although IRL the M5a was best diving zero, in game the M3 is best, and its dive will do in a "FR" setting

Ki61s aquitted themselves well in the face of 38s and F4Us, historically, or at least did moreso, until US pilots learned that Tonys could keep up in dives and treated them accordingly...

The mid war PTO is terribly hard to balance. Essentially the Japanese are using planes that are roughly on par with 1941 US model right into 1944.

Otoh I have learned that a setup A6M vs. P-38 is not as one sided as you'd think if you just look at the planes performance. The actual balance in this case depends a lot on the pilots involved. Admittedly now the vast majority are veterans, but back in the days when half the players did not know anything about tactics you'd see a lot of folks do better in the A6M than in the P-38 and the map would be fairly balanced.

This of course changes as people discover tactics, realize the P-38 is great and all the veterans go pick it, with the all the less experienced players flying the A6M.

WRT the Ki-61 - it can outdive the P-38. So if it was available, there's no reason why an enemy P-38 could do more than one hit and run attack against that base, even if the Ki-61 is not cannon armed.

Personally I've come to the habit to fly Japanese on maps like that, unless the US side is severely outnumbered for whichever reason. It just feels a lot better if you manage to beat the odds.

Edit: Just found map stats for a map that puts the F4U-1A vs. Japanese planes, they say 0.57 kills per flight for the F4U, 0.49 for the slower rest of the US fighters 0.54 for the A6M5 and 0.23 for the rest of the Japanese fighters (mostly Ki-61). It appears that the balance of the map is still acceptable, considering that the A6M is the more popular than all other model combined.

Well early PTO maps are not so often seen.
Where the advantage is on the Japanese side, simular to early WWII maps in Europe, haven´t seen any yet with the invasion of Poland or France topics.
Also if you do not fly to play out the advantages of your plane then you are at your oponents mercy.
Most fighter fliers tend to just furball no matter what aircraft they have. The more experianced pilots will try and play out the advantages of their plane.

For example when ever I see an interesting PTO map and a Betty is available I realy enjoy flying that bird. Is of couse at a big disadvantage against late war allied fighters, but I fly then so that I am hard to find, do long detours to hit my target from a not expected route. It is possible to fly these weaker planes and survive, just don´t play to the advantages of the better allied planes.

I don't mind the one-sided plane sets. What really gets me off is when folks send the team balance out of whack by choosing to fly 15 P-40s and 10 A-20s vs 5 Zeros and 2 Betties. The map gets rolled before I'm halfway to target.

It would be nice if people balanced themselves out.

I hope to see an auto-balance in the future (IL-2 or SoW). Some fights were lop-sided, of course, and it would be nice to program that into the balancing mechanism when necessary.

quote:

Originally posted by Boosher:
Shameless plug for my I-16 campaign. This time the odds will be stacked against you:

Played it through four times already.

I prefer to play as the underdog most of the time. "Balance" seems like such a silly concern. Look at the Warclouds server. Balanced to within an inch of it's life and the most static, uninspired and repetitive MP experience out there.

quote:

Originally posted by Romanator21:

I hope to see an auto-balance in the future (IL-2 or SoW). Some fights were lop-sided, of course, and it would be nice to program that into the balancing mechanism when necessary.

I'd like to be able to set the map balance in the map file, for instance a setting "team 1 max 45%".

quote:

Originally posted by Boosher:
Shameless plug for my I-16 campaign. This time the odds will be stacked against you:

I'll help you plug it. Downloaded it and played it twice so far. Toughest campaign I've ever loved: Just getting through the 1st mission and to the new base gives confidence, even though the odds are stacked against the player increasingly. Nice detailed/interesting briefings as well.

I sure learned how to avoid negative-G maneuvers!!

Well done.

Well auto balance has its advantages and disadvantages. As people come and go your auto balance can also be a pain in the but. If for example you have a 10 10 setting and you have that many people there, during the flight say 5 leave on the red side, and in mid flight you are forced to switch to red, that would be a major turn off!
Usually the balance thing is more for the furballers as there numbers matter, but if you fly the mission, try not to attract every enemy plane, numbers do not matter that much. On some games where I was out numbered 5 to 1 I had my biggest successes. As most do not fly the mission but just look for a fast dogfight.

quote:

Well auto balance has its advantages and disadvantages. As people come and go your auto balance can also be a pain in the but. If for example you have a 10 10 setting and you have that many people there, during the flight say 5 leave on the red side, and in mid flight you are forced to switch to red, that would be a major turn off!
Usually the balance thing is more for the furballers as there numbers matter, but if you fly the mission, try not to attract every enemy plane, numbers do not matter that much. On some games where I was out numbered 5 to 1 I had my biggest successes. As most do not fly the mission but just look for a fast dogfight.

The switching doesn't have to happen mid-sortie. That would be hellish.

The problem for me with being outnumbered is not about having to dogfight with 5 planes. It's the inability to complete mission requirements, while the other team has free range. Many times I start my Betty high-alt level bomb run on the vastly outnumbered blues, and within 30 minutes the map is rolled by A-20s doing everything Sturmovik style, before I am even even halfway to target. It's not a problem of being owned in my Betty, it's a problem of getting to the target before the mission is over!! It's impossible for a force of 5 to stop a force of 10-15 from doing this in such a situation. It feels like a total waste of my time.

When there is at least a slight semblance of balance, the mission lasts long enough for me to at least drop my load, which is more satisfying.

True, but that all is in the hands of the server operators. Servers with PTO maps are not many, and ones with balancing, I have not seen yet.

IL2 is just not like Red Orchestra, where you have that, when you join a server and a team has an advantage of +1 player you can not join that team.

Of course it is debatable if that is good especially if a team as infearior equipment, you would then at least wish for a little advantage in numbers.

quote:

Originally posted by megalopsuche:
Am I the only one who is bothered by drastically one-sided historical dogfight servers? I don't mind a normal disadvantage, but PTO setups with the P-38J vs A6M3, Ki-43, Ki-61 aren't worth it. Perhaps if the Ki-61 were a variant with 20mm in the cowl...
Flew the P-38 and landed 6 kills. Switched to blue out of sympathy and did get one 38, watched another dive to the enemy field at full speed to vulch, ran away for 15km, turned around and dove again at the field to vulch, rinse, repeat. Flying like that when your aircraft is vastly superior is a sin.

Other early/mid-war PTO setups are almost as bad...

Blegh.

I don't think you will get much sympathy from me regarding mismatches with Japanese aircraft. The A6m is probably one of the most challenging human flown planes to fight against using any US plane, and many of the Japanese planes are remarkably good performers.


I also find that the 38 is pretty tough to aim in a turn, only because the Zero and Ki are so responsive in contrast to the 38s high speed performance. All it takes is a break turn or flick out, and the 38 can't land a shot with out spraying and praying. Really it takes teamwork and patience to have any kind of success in the 38J, but i tend to avoid that map all together.

I actually was plagued by some similarities on my favorite map on Zeke's flying the P-47. It just seems the planes can absorb quite a bit of damage unless your initial burst is square on. Otherwise you are looping and rolling trying to keep your site on them but its very difficult. You end up chipping away at their wings or whatever parts your bullets manage to hit, but in the end there's like 3 or 4 of your teammates shooting at the same plane. It kind of seems absurd from that stand point.
On the other hand, a zero or ki-61 gets on my tail, its usually over pretty quick.
Just something else to ponder.


Bill

quote:

Originally posted by megalopsuche:
Other early/mid-war PTO setups are almost as bad...

Blegh.

Same people won't run Wildcats vs Zeros eh? Probably too one-sided.

quote:

Originally posted by BillSwagger:
On the other hand, a zero or ki-61 gets on my tail, its usually over pretty quick.

I do wonder how you managed to get a tail in planes that on average are 100 km/h faster than the A6M.

WRT to the "difficult" A6M, it might be difficult to get a successful firing solution, but it's very easy to get another try and the A6M poses no threat whatsoever to a well flown contemporary US fighter.

US vs Japanese is the only kill streak try I stopped because I got bored, not because I got shot down.

quote:

Originally posted by Feathered_IV:
I prefer to play as the underdog most of the time. "Balance" seems like such a silly concern. Look at the Warclouds server. Balanced to within an inch of it's life and the most static, uninspired and repetitive MP experience out there.

That's certainly not been my experience. Unlike the vast majority of other servers out there, it tends to attract enough clued-up pilots to have good T/S channels, which allow excellent team work to develop. Few things are more satisfying than a well planned and executed strike mission against well-defended targets.

quote:

Originally posted by BillSwagger:

quote:

Originally posted by megalopsuche:
Am I the only one who is bothered by drastically one-sided historical dogfight servers? I don't mind a normal disadvantage, but PTO setups with the P-38J vs A6M3, Ki-43, Ki-61 aren't worth it. Perhaps if the Ki-61 were a variant with 20mm in the cowl...
Flew the P-38 and landed 6 kills. Switched to blue out of sympathy and did get one 38, watched another dive to the enemy field at full speed to vulch, ran away for 15km, turned around and dove again at the field to vulch, rinse, repeat. Flying like that when your aircraft is vastly superior is a sin.

Other early/mid-war PTO setups are almost as bad...

Blegh.

I don't think you will get much sympathy from me regarding mismatches with Japanese aircraft. The A6m is probably one of the most challenging human flown planes to fight against using any US plane, and many of the Japanese planes are remarkably good performers.

Funny, for my part the early/mid-war Japanese aircraft are some of the easiest to shoot down, regardless of who is flying them. Give me the laser-beam armed P-38 and I can shoot down an A6M regardless of the evasive tactics.

Then you must be an excellent shot.

What's you hit percentage like?

If the SoV website hadn't been hacked I would give you the current %.

Over at AH I have ranged between 10-15%, although gunnery is a little bit easier there than in Il-2. Gunnery % can be heavily skewed by the type of targets you attack, the armament of your aircraft, and whether you are willing to take low % shots for some other practical goal, e.g. clearing a wingman, scaring a running bandit into bleeding energy, or just hosing during a BnZ pass because your aircraft carries lots of ammo, e.g. P-38, P-47.

The type of controllers you use is also very important. I have a CH joystick and pedals, and so that's another advantage.

...But I'm not nearly as deadly with wing-mounted armaments. The P-38 is a special case of easy gunnery, and when you combine that with slow, fragile targets, success isn't difficult.

-------

Edit, it looks like the SoV website does have some scores back up... My gunnery % is 9% flying the Yak-1B, 109G-6/AS, P-400, A6M3, P-38J, and P-39D. But the sample size is extremely small, only about 2+ hours of flight time.