TACTICS SCHOOL: A Joint Effort

[:FI:Falcon]

Sod the practice ... Sooner or later some Do "Falcon" zo will drift across your gun sight, and no matter what you do, you can't help but fire and shoot them down.

Dozo?

is that the Japanese version of Bozo?

[:FI:TacticalS!]

If you do this dillegently you'll be shootin' tactical in no time

On second thought, ditch the practicing mate and just jump online. I don't need any more Aces shooting me down.

[:FI:Snoop Baron]

Don't let him fool ya Timber Those are crocodile tears, u better be careful online whenever Tactical is around. He is just as likely to kill you if your on his team or not

[:FI:Falcon]

and remember folks ...

anyone new,

newish,

or professing complete incompetence ...

MUST be given a wee bit o'slack

until they get better

or having been found out to be a liar.

(about the incompetence thingie)

then kill.


Fal "been there" con

[Bambi]

There is always someonre better than you out there... typically someone who plays 18 hours a day

G

true but if only there was someone worse as well

I havent been online since PF came out , everytime i fire it up offline it does something that annoys me and i give up, like last night i was chasing il2s with a Ki-84 and twice the SOB rear gunner blew me to smithereens with a single round

AND the A-20 campaign appears to be missing from the new dgen verison ...grumble moan..why cant things stay the same for ever, the old days were best ..mutter..whine

[:FI:TacticalS!]

The best part about Pacific Fighters for me so far has been the ability to continue playing my Russian campaign.

Seriously, though, I have had some fun moments smashing my plane into the backside of my carrier. You would think I would eventually learn to stop doing that.

I am encouraged that the campaigns (and other issues) will be addressed with the next patch. Reading posts over at SimHQ has me looking forward to a new map and plane(s), but more importantly the DGEN fixes.

The only real issue for now is when will this major patch be released. I feel this should receive top priority given some of the more serious problems, especially for dedicated offliners.

Regards

[:FI:Rabitski]

Hi Timber.
If you like I would be glad to help you, me being one of them guys who fly 18-20hrs a day. I'm on comms all the time be it TS with the :FI: or Ventrilo as <PF>Rabitski. Here are a few tips though that I think are very handy.

Firstly you have to fly as if you life was really on the line. Once you start flying like that you'll find you tend to live longer and that M8 is the first and most important step. Never go into a fight unless you have the advantage be it Alt or speed and best of all try to have both.

When you do get on the 6 of another plane don't fire untill you are sure your going to hit him. Shooting to soon will mean you will either miss him or he will know you are there and this will make it all the harder to finnish him off. Fire a burst into him and pull up again with any luck you will have done some heavy damage to him you can swoop down and finnish him of or if he is heading home leave him 9 times out of 10 you will get the kill. Never sit in the saddle of an enemy to long, I see this all the time guys will get on the 6 of another plane and just won't let go even when some elce get's on them and is knocking lumps out of them, all they want is the kill, but what is the use of flying like that when they are killed 2 secounds later.

To help with your shooting do quick missions all the time. Pick say 3 types of planes you would like to fly and fly them all the time. Put yourself against planes from the axis (if your flying allied) side or allied (if flying Axis). There is realy no piont flying against planes from your own side ie. allied v allied because on most of the on line dogfight servers it's allied v axis, plus you are fighting a plane that has the same flight profile as yours and its just luck if you get the kill, that or the other guy is stupid. I know this sounds stupid but it works I have my hit % up to 12-15% and belive me 12% is all it takes to make bit's of a bad guy .

Now there are a lot of good dogfighters out there and it's pure luck again if ya can bring them down but what really make the difference is to be able to B&Z (boom and zoom) there is nothing and enemy can do against you. Flying like this you hold all the cards. You can dive down on them and hit them before they even know your there, plus if you makes a baggs of the run you have the speed to climb back up and there is No way they can catch you, having a wingman with you really makes this work. One guy makes the run the other sits up and keeps an eye on him, if the lead messes up the run and is climbing away the bad guy nearly always followes him hopeing to get the kill then your wing man swoops down on him and finnishes him off. The hard part of all this is finding a wingman who is willing to watch you shoot down all these planes as they normaly get only 50% of the kills.
I have to say this now S~ Ardmore your the best wingman I have ever had, unreal flying M8. Yesterday on Warclouds PF I broke my all time high score 3510 pts and I was only shoot down once I crashed the other 2 times but at that stage I was kind of glad as I had been flying so long my ass was numb .

Another thing is to try to fly planes that are kind of hard to handle. If you get the hang of these you can fly anything, wheres if you fly the Rehab planes you will never improve. Plus try to stay clear of Rehab servers, ones with external views and incons that you can see for miles. If it has externals you will never be able to bounce anything as all they have to do is press F3 to clear there 6 or F2 to see where you are.
Incons are another thing, I wish they weren't there at all but if there like the ones in Warclouds I can live with them. Having Incons that you can see from miles of stops you from useing your head when going into battle all you have to do is look and you can tell thats a freindly thats an enemy and so on, plus you should learn to spot planes by sight alone and also the sound of there engines. I don't know if you have it but Track IR really is a great help (ask Santa for it ) .
I guess it really boils down to this, get used to flying the hardest setting you can and the hardest planes once you get used to this everything elce is gravey.

No matter how good you think you are there are guys out there who are better, theres no shame in getting shot down it'll happen to us all at some time or other. What you do have to do though is to try to make it hard for them to get the kill and don't get killed because you did something stupid. The harder you make the kill the more chance someone will be able to help you out. Use your head more then your arm. In other word don't get into a dogfight if you can help it, once you start to turn your loseing speed and alt. Think first what will happen if this goes south in a hurry, whats my escape path and so on, once you have all that worked out fight away.

I'll post more later on different aspects as I think of them.

[Paddy]

Thanks for your time lads. The help is appreciated.

[:FI:TacticalS!]

Great post Rab!

While I appreciate that there are Rogues here at the squad who are not interested in being very competitive, we are all here to have fun together [insert group hug ].

----- Wingman -----

Also, while it is definitely true there's always a better pilot lurking around, I think more to the point in aviation combat, unlike other certain gaming, there really is no real opportunity for a "one-man" army nor is this historically correct (and for a reason). At best, a very patience player can effectively use BnZ tactics and remain high and safe most of the time. This is usually because most other players are happy on hunting easier game below.

Something I would love to explore much more than I do is wingman/squad tactics. I think we generally do a decent job with flying together (just need to use separate comms a bit more - but not always of course).

Nonetheless, I think most can quickly appreciate the wingman approach. Rab gave an excellent example when employing BnZ. We have talked about wingman training, especially for new guys, but quite frankly for various reasons I don't think it will really become a reality here (and that's OK).

However, I see no reason why someone who is interested in really pushing themselves to seek out any :FI: mate (preferable in their own time zone) and practice together online and fight together when the squad plays.

----- Icons -----

I'll try to avoid the icon debate that certainly has plagued the IL-2 Community for a very long time.

We almost always use a customized icon system, so you can certainly practice with them.

Personally I am indifferent about the use of icons. I have really enjoyed playing campaigns and online without them. It really does add more immersion and fosters new ID skills and patience.

It is harder, in my opinion, to play without icons in offline campaigns since the AI certainly knows who everyone is. So using icons offline seems to me to neutralize this problem.

Online, at least in theory, the situation should be that everyone is on the same playing field. I really doubt that however. There is the hardware to first consider. A person who owns an awesome rig with a very large, crystal clear monitor, great fps and so forth clearly has an advantage, assuming both players have similar gaming skills.

Moreover, there are lots of video card "tricks" perhaps not considered cheats that some use to compensate for the lack of icons. The guy who plays the game with an interest for seeing all the eye-candy is certainly at the disadvantage to the killer [insert evil laughter here] playing the game in a certain manner to better illustrate where the planes are located.

Personally, I would love a system where one could just have a small symbol above each plane so you knew what side they were on (to help neutralize the hardware/software differences between players), but no further information.

Bottom line with icons or without icons is that I really don't believe they neglect the employment of fighter tactics (unlike open cockpit). But to each their own. I'll play with any setting or situation - just as long as I get some kills!

P.S. Oleg in the game manual echos these general thoughts about icons.

[:FI:Snoop Baron]

Good advice Rab. The only thing I would disagree on would be ( not counting icons... ), being against going up against planes of the same side Axis/Allied or of the same type.

When it comes to increasing your aircombat skills historical things such as Allies/Axis or going against the same type should not enter the equation.

In fact I would say some of the best practice you can get is when going against an opponent that is flying the same plane and you both start on equal footing co-alt and co-speed. This way it is all about the pilot. If your oponent be it human or AI keeps getting the upper hand then you cleary have something to learn and it is often easier to figure out when everything else is the same in the equation.

s!
Snoop

[:FI:Rabitski]

Ah well Doctors differ and Patients die. But I'm very hardly ever the patients.
I think over the last few months I have made 3 post's along the same line as the one I made. And each time it recived the same reply from Tactical and Snoop " Great post" but here's why we'll keep doing the same thing . It's easy for someone who trains on full real to go into a server that has loser settings but it's not the other way around. You should train Harder than you mean to play. This is just my view and I know in the over all sceam of things it's doesn't amount to a hill of beans.

You run the danger guys of being big fish in a small pond. And when some of the guys do go out into the big bad world of online combat they last no time. I have a great deal of pride in the squad and I want to see it do well. How many squad matches has the squad had and each time they got milled . And yet those of us who flew say VWF did really well over all. We came up against some of the real top dogs and gave as good as we got.

A prime example of this whould be the Team match against USA V Russia.
The US guys set up the match and asked the Russians to put forward a team.
Well most of the US team always flew on US times, and they only flew on dogfight servers. So when all the top ROSS guys showed up they had no idea who they were. There were 3 other <PF> guys on the team Coastie, Mad Moses and I, We had flowen on the same side as the ROSS squad in VOW and we tried telling the rest of them that these guys were Real good and we needed to change plans, but alas because the rest of the US guys had never came across them they thought they were no good. Well we lost that one 35 to 3 (we shot down 3 of them).

Ah well I'll leave it up to ye do what ye will.S~

[:FI:TacticalS!]

I actually understand your frustration mate. There have been times in the past that I have tried to encourage a little more competitiveness, but realized that a number of Rogues want to keep it more recreational. I have come to accept and respect this general desire. So nowadays I seek individuals to fly wingman and apply certain flight combat tactics instead of trying to promote it among the squad. So to answer your lament, there is "no bigger pond" many of the guys seem to ever want to swim in.

Notwithstanding, there are a number of folks very skillful, or at the very least, appear to want to become much more competitive. And if we are being completely honest here, I doubt the Fightin' Irish is an ideal squad for such folks. I know personally I have longed to fly a lot more during the week than I presently do, and really develop wingman and squad tactics in order to fight other squads. Maybe someday I will need to make a decision to find a different squad, but until then I continue to enjoy the virtual friendships I have come to appreciate here.

My post (and I trust Snoop's as well) isn't an attack on being more competitive as much as recognizing the reality of the squad's general outlook. If you take a look at VWF, for example, one quickly realizes that not many :FI: pilots participated - well certainly not on a regular basis. Again, we seem for the most part to be recreational as compared to other certain squads.

As for VWF I guess it deserves some honest criticism. What I heard from a variety of folks is that the mission objective quickly became second place to playing "hide and seek" in an attempt to staying alive and hopefully getting the odd kill. However, online wars are meant to simulate the real thing aren't they? In the Normandy Invasion, for instance, suppose the fighter pilots all decided to fly very high and stay over their airfields or over their enemies and not cover the bombers, I wonder how the war would have ended?

Same with icons, I find it silly business when folks who argue about icons also reconfigure their systems and video card settings, such as using ATI's Special Effects options, or the monitor's contrast settings, to try to help compensate for the lack of icons in the first place. Isn't a fairer approach for all concerned to have some form of icons?

In any event, I think Oleg says it best on page 41 of the Pacific Fighters' game manual, "Strictly speaking, one cannot call it entirely unrealistic [using icons]. Our ability to perceive our actual environment far surpassess our ability to perceive its virtual analogue in terms of resolution and the field of vision, even if all other conditions are similar. However, in real life, there are no icons on targets, and you can deselect the option if you feel like it."

Anyway, just my honest feelings about these matters. Rab for what's its worth I do enjoy all your posts, I share some of your frustration, and above all else recognize your gaming skills and serious approach to IL-2.

Best regards,
TactS!

[:FI:Fenian]

I hear ya Tact....

There are definitely two types of squaddie here. Some just wanna have fun, which is fine - some want to go the more realistic and *tactical* route - myself, I liked VWF a lot - but I'm not up for that type of flying all the time...

I suppose what I'm saying is that the squad is what you make of it.

There are enough members to form an 'inner squad' that wants to fly the way you do.... isn't there?

Mayhap you should post a poll and look for interested parties?

The general idea behind having the squad soooo relaxed was that people could decide to fly as, when and how they like to. I'm the last person to tell people what to do (unless theyz causing me pain) - but I understand the problem that this presents for squad members with more competitiveness in them.

Rab joined the PF squad for reasons like this - didn't you Rab? - and we have no rule (we have NO Rules - other than :FI:Rules ) about not being able to double-job, so to speak.

We have no leaders here - just people who point in a general direction and occasionally sweep the floor and finish off the beer from the previous night... which means that it's important that we take individual responsibilty for what we want out of the squad.

But I know what the guys are like.... hard to corral them and organise....

I see online wars like VWF as the right place to fly the real stuff...

Dunno if any of this helps though...

Up the discussions!!!

[:FI:Gurberly]

In the overall scheme of things ... I'll have to contradict ya as I reckon it does amount to a pretty big heap of beans The reason I say that is because it's reflective of what you seek to get out of the game the enjoyment you get from it. Therefore because it's important to you, it is important to me too.

I'm in one of those caring sharing moods... can you tell?



Seriously though, the advice is sound and appreciated. It certainly can't be faulted, not from a tactical/survival point. The only issue I would have with it is that it tends to draw people to an uber plane v's uber plane DF server, and no one wanting to take a ground attack role in VOW/VWF etc.

OK so I may have a death wish, but I'm quite looking forward to flying the Ju88 online.... and I fully anticipate being shot to lots of little itsy bitsy pieces. I wonder if I will ever make a successful "there and back mission". Probably not on an icons server.... maybe if I sneak real low hopefully the eyes in the sky won't see me.....

I'm quite enjoying the Beaufighter and if everyone were to take the "advantage" approach, you'd never see anything but the best available plane being flown on any given server....certainly no Beaufighters. Unless of course there was a Beaufighter vs Ju88 server... but oh, what side to fly?

Each to their own as long as it bringeth personal fulfilment

G

[:FI:Falcon]

What Feen ol'Bean said ...

you are a member of one of the largest squadrons 'round,

if you want something,

organize it, advertise it, built it, sell it

and we, some of us, will come.

s'loot!