quote:

Originally posted by il2battle:
You play with stock campaing ? If do, AI fly fast, almost at full power all the time. It's gonna be really hard to catch up them. 110% power won't help, you only get engine overheat and sometimes it seems that, if you slow down your power to 80% or something for awhile and then go back to 100% your plane speed up more.

That seems to be normal behavior with slow planes like stuka, J8A... AI fly fast and in cruising too.

Only things you can do are; start as a leader - use autopilot to catch them - play with user made campaings.

For stuka there is some user made campaings, but only few, too bad. It's lovely plane and should have more campaings. Those stock campaings for it isn't so fun, because of that catch up thing.

Ofcourse with practice you get best of it, but in beginning... well.

Fly in smile on your face.

I can keep up with the AI ( in the Stuka or almost all the aircraft ) easily. If you learn how to fly right, so can you.

quote:

Originally posted by mortoma:
With the stuka you have to go to supercharger stage 2 when you get over 2400 meters altitude!!
I'm surprised nobody has mentioned this yet. At least I didn't see any mention of it in a cursory reading of the posts.

This may very well be a MAJOR contributor to your problem!!! Change that stage to get some horsepower back.

Oh yes, thank you for that ! 2400m.
I been thinking of what altitude I have to do it. Didn't find answer from the quide and didn't search it anywhere else - yet. Now I don't have to. Thank you.

Btw. altitude for the He-111 ?

Anyway, didn't have nowdays so much problems to keep up with the AI as before (longtime noob - from FB - just begin of this year getting better joystick and starting to use full engine control - big help), but still in some campaings they go really fast or it seems so as long as I'm behind them.
When catching them realize, that they actually didn't fly so fast, just accelerating faster then I do and get away from me.

IL-10 campaing in Manchuria (< sorry for that) AI fly 440km/h, so I need 460-470km/h to catch up. 440 not a problem, but over it and keep it... well, need more fly hours with that plane. Ofcourse getting them just before attack and maybe that's good - been really bad in formation flying - too.

And taking off just right after AI (leader) works very well, using that too, if knowing that they gonna go fast.

Same that didn't using any flaps to takeoff with Hurricane and Spitfire to speed up faster, when airborne and didn't they do that in real life too, when they only have landing flaps.
Ofcourse I could use any flap position I want (stepless adjustment), like AI can (all 3).

Anyway thanks again for that Stuka's charger stage altitude.

quote:

Originally posted by animematt99:
Ok..so I just cannot seem to beat any missions. I have done most of the training videos. But lets say I am chasing someone...I am at full throttle, yet they keep on getting farther away. Or...when I pull up a bit, or turn, I always seem to go into a major stall.

First off.. this sim requires a lot of practice... even if you are an experienced simmer. Secondly try @ 90-95% throttel and 90-95% prop pitch and trim climb.. keep your rate of climb relatively low.. most planesd have a ROC indicator.. to find out where it isd on the planes you prefer to fly either use the Aircraft Guide in a PDF in your 46 install (It should be in the same folder as the sim on your HD..) or hit the Essentials thread and go to the Cockpit Reference Guide link.

Although it's possible to keep up with the AI in almost every aircraft in the sim ( in stock condition ) there are a couple of planes that even I have trouble keeping up in. Those are a few of the early Spits and the FM-2, maybe one other that evades me at this moment. But the Stuka is not one of them. I do remember the Stuka being a little more challenging than most though. You have to fly it really carefully and almost perfectly. I learn the hard way by practicing, still it can be done though.

If you wish to keep up more easily and not take the time to learn the secrets, I can give you a pointer which allows you to slow down the AI aircraft so you can keep up a lot more easily!! It can be donw by editing one of two files in the DGen folder.

There are two files, one called PacificPlanes.dat and the other one called EuroPlanes.dat but realize there are two similar files with the same name but the extenstion is .txt instead of dat. The .dat ones are the ones that Dgen uses in the game so edit those.

Using these two files you can find your plane of choice and slow down the cruise speed to whatever you like as long as it's not too fast or so slow the planes will stall of course.


Here is a sample line from the EuroPlanes.dat file for the LA-5FN:
( Please note there is commonly several lines for each plane for different mission types )

Allies USSR FBomberM LA_5FN 400 1000 1000 2XFAB100


First field denotes Axis or Allied
Second field is country
Third field is mission type
Fourth field is aircraft type
Fifth field is cruise speed ( for that particular type of mission and may vary, here it's 400Kph )
Sixth field is Cruise altitude ( this also varies according to mission type )
Seventh field is attack altitude ( particularly important for bombers or dive bombers )
Eighth field is the type of weapon ( also varies a lot according to mission )



The fifth field is the one that you can adjust if you want AI to slow down a bit. The nice thing here is that Dgen automatically adjust things so that if you slow down your flight, they will not get there too late. Or if you sped things up, your flight would not get there too soon. In the case of the FM-2, I slowed down the speed from 400Kph to 370 and still arrived at the right place at the right time. So there you go, edit the Stuka speeds if you wish!!