Combat Guidlines
Read these axioms to go along with the ACM techniques. A smart pilot is a live pilot. And knowing your stuff makes you smart. So READ UP! Salute!
- When in combat, the order of priorities are YOURSELF, your aircraft, your wingman, the mission.
This is the number one rule to follow if you want to fly like a real pilot. A human life is valued above all else, even if it is a virtual pilot. So if you care about your mission and rank points or enjoy the thrill of landing back at base in one piece, key this principle in mind and let it be your driving force as to whether you should engage in a fight or not. - Know your aircraft.
(And your adversary's as well!) If you don't know how your aircraft performs and how far you can push the flight envelope, you won't get the best performance out of your aircraft and lots of time, riding the edge of the performance envelope will make the difference in winning and losing a fight. Practice, practice, practice! Also know your how adversary's aircraft performs vs. your aircraft. If you keep losing against a certain type enemy aircraft, fly it offline and online, particularly against the type of plane you like to fly to get a feel for what it CAN and CANNOT do. Yea, it means switching sides but how else will you get the practice. - DON'T take off from a field that is under attack.
You have an excellent chance of getting vulched (shot down) before you even clear the runway. It looks like a lot fun taking off from an airfield that is under attack because of all the action there but usually YOU are the one providing the action! - Altitude IS Life, Whoever is higher dictates the fight.
Altitude is extremely important for prop driven aircraft. There are no afterburners on your aircraft in this simulation. Altitude represents potential energy can be converted to kinetic energy (speed) to maneuver AND vice versa. It takes "precious time" to gain or regain altitude so think wisely about diving from say 15,000ft to 5,000 ft to kill a bandit. You would be wiser to engage bandits a lot closer to your altitude. "Speed is life" came from the Israel training manual and is similar to "altitude is life". If you bleed off all your speed (use up your kinetic energy), you won't be able to maneuver thereby giving your adversary a nice easy target to kill. At the start of an engagement, the fighter with the higher altitude generally has the higher energy state so he can dictate whether he wants to engage, disengage, run away and so forth. This higher energy state allows him to attack at will, thereby putting him in the offensive position and the lower altitude fighter in the defensive position. Although the higher altitude fighter is in the offensive position, that is not a guarantee that he will win the fight. If he makes less mistakes than his lower altitude adversary during the fight, the adversary will die. However, if he makes a gross mistake, like pulling a hard turn (more than 45 degrees) to try to shoot down the tighter turning adversary, he will quickly bleed off most of his energy and suddenly find himself becoming the hunted. - Don't get Low and Slow.
Energy management is one of the key components for successful air combat. Once you use up all your energy, you can no longer maneuver your aircraft and you become a sitting duck. So you don't want to find yourself "Low and Slow", meaning you have no altitude (potential energy) to convert to speed (kinetic energy) for maneuvering AND not enough speed left to be able to maneuver. Engagements usually start at higher altitudes and work their way down to low altitudes as energy is used up so make sure you have enough energy to exit the fight if need be. Depending upon the mission and the aircraft type, you may want to break off an engagement when you reach a floor of 5000 ft. - Keep your Scan.
Always be looking outside of your aircraft. Keep an eye on all opponents. Switch views regularly. You wouldn't want an unsuspecting enemy to fly right up your six and "cherry pick" you. If you are cherrypicked, it is completely your fault. - Two is Better than One.
Two pairs of eyes are better than one. You have a nice blind spot to the 6 o'clock position of your aircraft. While you can try to cover it by weaving back and forth, you can cover it more efficiently by having a wingman watching your six while you watch his six. Of course, having 2 planes take on another aircraft is much better than 1 on 1. After all, a pair of wingmen have been the basic air combat unit since the early days of WW2. - Use surprise when possible.
his is war so use whatever you can to your advantage to surprise and attack the enemy, hopefully for a single pass kill. This includes using clouds or the sun to hide in; flying out of sight, like you are passing by, then turning around and coming back to attack; coming in fast at the bandit's low six, etc. - Watch your closure speed.
While it may seem like a good idea to come in at full bore speed when making a gun faster, the faster your closure speed is, the less time you have to get that tracking shot on the bandit. If you approach the bandit at 400 kts, you will find you have very little time to line the bandit up. If the bandit spots you and pulls a hard breaking turn, you will find that you will black out easier if you try to turn with the bandit due to the higher speed (which you shouldn't do anyway. If you fly directly at the bandit's 'dead six', along with the fast speed, you find yourself only being able to take that shot when you are almost on top of the bandit because the dead six position presents a low cross section. You'll take your shot, then start to pull up and/or slight over to the side of the bandit because you can't turn sharply away from the bandit. While you may be higher than the bandit, you will be in FRONT of the bandit and lots of times he will be able to raise/turn his nose and shoot you before you can get far enough away. - Conserve your ammo.
You have limited amounts of amo and you wouldn't want to be caught with none in your guns. Only fire when you are positive you are going to hit your target. Fire in short bursts. It only takes a few cannon rounds to tear an airplane apart. Remember, you still have that long flight home! - Fight YOUR fight and NOT your adversary's fight.
Don't let your adversary sucker you into fight that uses his aircraft's strengths and exploits your aircraft's weaknesses. Ex. Don't get into a Turn and Burn (dogfight) fight when the plane you are flying is designed for Boom and Zoom (Hit and Run) tactics. - Remember to use the vertical!
Horizontal or flat turns burn up a lot of energy. Use the vertical, i.e.. a up OR down maneuver of some type as much as possible, no matter what type of fighter aircraft you fly. The vertical move doesn't necessarily have to be straight up or down, it can be oblique (diagonal). - No more than 45 degrees.
When you are making your attack run on the bandit, don't turn and follow the bandit for more than 45 degrees. You will find if you continue turning with the bandit, you will bleed off your energy, probably to the point where the bandit has an energy advantage over you. Then you will become the hunted. This is because the bandit has less energy than you so he will be able to turn tighter than you. You will have to pull back harder on the stick to try to equal his turn circle, which you won't. You will end up with a bigger turn circle than the bandit and burn off a lot of energy trying to tighten that turn. Also, because your turn circle is larger, the bandit can roll his aircraft and turn back into toward you and you suddenly find yourself in front of the bandit, now being hunted by the bandit with less energy than him. - Anticipate.
Just like the game of chess, you have to plan and anticipate where the bandit is going, then maneuver your aircraft to arrive at the point you expect the bandit to be so you can deliver the coup de grace. You just don't do this once. Air combat occurs in a very rapid and fluid environment. Anything can happen. You maneuver to attack the bandit and he counters your maneuver, then you counter his move, then he counters yours and so it goes, each of you trying to anticipate where the other is going and maneuvering to get a kill, neutral an advantage, turn the table or even escape the fight. If you are wrong in anticipating where the bandit is going, you could quickly find the tables turning against you. Of course to be able to anticipate maneuvers in air combat, you need to understand basic fighter maneuver well. - Don't climb into a fight.
While climbing into a fight allows you to build potential (stored) energy, your kinetic (speed) energy is quite low and you won't have enough energy to do defensive maneuvers as the attacker makes his run. If you have enough to perform defensive maneuvers, then you can do a very gentle climb, as long as you maintain your speed to maneuver. - Don't go high if bandit is close on six.
While you want to do vertical maneuvers to help maintain your energy as much as possible, if the bandit is within or close to guns range, going high will slow down your airspeed while at the same time, producing a nice wide profile of your aircraft to give your attacker a nice fat juicy target to shoot at. Boom, you are dead! - Trade-off is the name of the game.
Trade-off is the name of the game in air combat. A good example is the using of high and low yo-yos. You can use a high yo-yo to help prevent an overshoot as you fly lag pursuit, which reduces closure while decreasing your AOT with the bandit. However, while it slows your closure, it also starts increase your distance from the bandit, possibly extending you beyond maximum gun range. A low yo-yo, while increase you closure with the bandit to get you within effective gun range, could also cause you to overshoot the target is you aren't paying plus it increases your AOT with the bandit, which makes it more difficult to hit the bandit due to the high deflection angle. Everything in air combat has some kind of trade-off. There are no magic maneuvers that will get you a kill. There are millions of combinations of things that can happen to win a fight with all kinds of trade-offs happening. That is why air combat is so fun and challenging.
So now you know what you should be doing up there. Just remember these things and you will be touching down on your base runway soon!