Dogfighting Tips & Strategies

[Kiwi_Jo]

Well hi to all here on this board

I am usually only into racing games but as I love WW2 movies (Pearl Harbour and Tora Tora Tora ! are my faves) I thought I would give this a go and it is made by aussies so I thought that really cool.

It is a tough game but I have achieved ACE on 3 of the first missions but am now well and truly stuck on the Toroa mission so I asked for help in that thread but I think also that this game assumes a level of ability in flight sim games, specifically in dogfighting skills. The tutorial is Ok but it doesn't really teach how to dogfight and I spend alot of time going around in circles just trying to locate my enemy once I am close. I realise now that getting the right speed & angle of approach is crucial but holy cow batman, is it hard ??!!

Am I alone or does anyone else have problems ? And is there a set of rules/hints to follow when dogfighting that will make it a little easier ?

Thanks Kiwi Jo

[RFT]

This is a great idea for a thread, so I'll throw in the strategies I usually use.
some of this i've already put in a previous thread, but it's worth repeating.

If there's one thing that links the great aces, it's that they were great marksmen- it's a keen eye for the shot that gets you kills more than fancy manouvers.

HOTP helps you out a lot with the red sight telling you when you've got a good shot, and the trick is to give yourself the best chance to use it.

in general close-range dogfighting isn;t the best way to rack up kills- best engagement distance is 400-800m. closer and things get very twisty-turny very quickly. further away and it's getting harder to hit and the slugs have lost most of the destructive power.

Don't waste lots of time dogfighting a single opponent- if you're finding hard to get a shot on an enemy, you're probably better off disengaging and engaging a target in a more favourable position.

For most of the game, your plane will have a significant speed advantage,over the enemy, which tactically means you can pick your fights much more than a slower opponent can.

The payoff means that you'll spend a lot of time overshooting, especially against Petes- which, in my experience can be the mst annoying targets to fight, as they're very slow, but small and manoeuverable making them a very hard target.

One thing you can do to prevent overshoots is remeber to manouver in the vertical plane- if an enemy is in a tight turn and you're about to sail past, pull the nose up high into the sky- this will slow you down. using roll with the plane pointing up lets you turn a squarer corner as seen from the top-down. think of an circle inside a square- he's flying the circle, you're usingthe vertical plane to fly the square. if you then pull the nose back onto the target. Using the "view target" button will help you a lot in this move, as it shows the relation of your two aircraft. This move is called a "High yo-yo".

one important trick to remeber on Taroa 1 is to keep a close on the runway. It's a lot easier to destroy the zeros before they take off...

[Kiwi_Jo]

Thanks Rich, I like that tip about flying a "square corner" I hadn't heard of that but will certainly practice it as it sounds like a real good technique.

I think this game initially has a very steep learning curve for those of us unaccustomed to flight sims but it is also a fantastic buzz when you do complete the missions - the pace is just so fast and the action so so frantic !

I put in about 4 more hours today on Taroa before I finally completed it and the breakthrough for me was that my dogfighting skills have slowly improved plus it is really critical to nail all the AA guns and the Zero's that are on the ground at Taroa. After so many hours spent at that island I felt like I knew every damn square inch of the wretched place. I was so happy that I loitered around picking off more Zeroes instead of getting on with the job that my armour was down to a quarter by the time I headed back to the carrier and was caught unawares by the surprise encounter prior to landing - luckily I got through it but I wont dilly-dally in future

Hopefully some of the other "Aces" out there will contribute some of their secrets !

tally-ho from Kiwi Jo

[DarkDirtyDwarf]

Originally Posted by RFT

Petes- which, in my experience can be the mst annoying targets to fight, as they're very slow, but small and manoeuverable making them a very hard target.

I've found that most of the airplanes can fly very slowly without stalling making a lot easier to follow slow opponent like Petes, Bombers and so on.
To slow down very fast you just need to point the nose of your plane up a little just like you do for a "High yo-yo". This make also easy to shoot your powerful rockets from close distance killing many enemy in few seconds while they are in formation (go on their 6, slow down, shoot!)

RFT, do you know other manouvers like the High yo-yo you described?

One of the manouvres a like very much is to use R3 to escape a little far away, then roll the airplane up-side down (inverted flight) and pull down the right stick to reverse the direction you're facing (in this way you also slow down a lot so be careful to not stall while pointing to the sky! Yuo can use R3 anyway).
In this way you will find yourself right in front of the opponent near enough to shoot at him (rockets, if you have them)

This manouver is very useful also for dive bombing missions since you can draw an orizontal 8 (I dont' know how to say that in a better way) where the centre of the 8 is the boat you're aiming at. This is the fastest way I've found to sink ships. This manouver can also be used to fire torpedoes.

If this monouvre is a problem you can also do a wing over (pull up pointing the sky, roll 90° right or left, pull up the stick to turn in the opposite direction, turn 90° left or right to come back in plane at the same altitude).