I mean the MK108 does fine damage wise, but the ballistics… Especially lining up against the 131.
G-2 does wonderfully against the F8F-1. Unless the later models are for some reason worse, I don’t see why you would have any trouble fighting the F8F-1B.
G-2 does well against F-8F because unfortunately it is in fact better than the later models, which are tbf faster and better climbers but worse at turning.
The way I’ll put it is that the models after G-2 either does much the same turn wise or worse. (much the same for G-10 and K-4, worse for G-14 which is a heavy model) However they have gained speed and climb rate, which is no doubt useful, along side option of a 30mm.
Also I rarely find beating an F-8F1 an easy job with G-2 trop especially as u might find multiple passings are taken to take down that plane.
YES EXACTLY! What is purpose of this climbing spirals, energy trapping etc. if i can’t bring my nose to target xD??
In another battle I energy trapped Yak-3 3 times in a row but after a short dive i couldn’t bring my nose to him to shoot xD. I have never had such situation in any fighter except MiG-3. I always score a kill when i properly energy trap enemies.
You know which planes have similar issue? Italian C205s. They were quite good several years ago. Now they are like Bf109 and Fw190 - they are only good at flying fast in straight line and climbing. That’s all.
How often did u use them as primary / sole weapon?
I strongly recommend to use them more often - or try to use them in a 262 - in order to understand that the damage output is highly inconsistent. In one match one hit grants a kill - in the next you get 3 hits, no crit, nothing. Same story with 50mm HE in the 262…
Btw - i have no clue why you and others feed the troll in this thread. The player in question has lousy air vs air stats and very limited 109 experience. There is no need to comment anything from him.
I feel this issue is mostly an instructor one. For whatever reason, the instructor is needlessly aggressive in making you fly safe with german aircraft and denies a not insignificant portion of your maximum possible AoA.
Your critical AoA before stalling, assuming coordinated flight, is 17 degrees without instructor limits. Gimme a sec to check with instructor.
I’m pressing elevator button in a flat circle and it won’t go above 12 degrees.
With sim controls, I can push it to ~16 degrees where it starts to wobble and get unwieldy.
That’s 16.9 where I pulled too hard and stalled myself.
In max possible AoA before you eat dirt:
That’s how much turn performance you’re missing in RB F4.
I legit cant pull hard enough in RB to actually make use of my corner speed and I’m not losing any speed!
I’ll grant tho, it keeping your AoA low does help with sustained turns somewhat.
As an aside, F8F seems to have similar limits:
Nota bene: being able to turn more AoA is not always beneficial. RB F8F and Bf109 F4 don’t seem to bleed speed after going down to like 350 km/h IAS while the SB variants can and will bleed all their speed to 200 k/h if you so desire.
RB controls seem fine for best sustained turn but punish trying to use corner speed turns.
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I mean to me who uses it mainly on 109, it does feel like the damage is great cause i don’t normally know if I am hitting my 30mms and when I do, the enemy tend to be dead and then I go ‘great damage’. It does feel a lot more inconsistent on the 262 and the ballistics issue is even worse.
109s are amazing if you fly them correctly making sure you always have alt advantage and energy trap, which is easy to do with them. F4, G2, G6 are incredible. The more turn oriented ones are ok. G10/14/K4 are pretty meh these days and potentially slightly overtiered. 190s are pretty trash.
I’d much rather be in a 109 than a F8F, I find F8Fs high speed handling to be really terrible and they have a giganerfed rudder making getting shells on target sort of difficult. They are basically worse Yaks with more ammo.
Yaks are of course brokenly OP af, they always have been.
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As promised above:
A decent pilot with 7 kills in a 109 G-6 (5 fighters, 2 B-25s) - even as his opponents were not really smart it was obvious that he knows how to play and what his plane can do in the right hands:
Gaijin Entertainment - Single Sign On
He lost by tickets.
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The biggest problem for the 109 is that once you reach the later models they are eclipsed at what they do well by the Soviet (and other?) alternatives… within the context of ARB. Most fights start “mid” and go low. The 109s are still good in terms of their flight performance, but they’re definitely more reliant on careful energy management than some of the competition.
The 190 suffers from just being a brick generally. They are similar in some respects to the P-51D-30… the main difference/quirk being that 190s are wholly dependent on good flap usage to pull for just about any shot you might take if the enemy is even modestly alert/aware. Definitely a frustrating plane to fly in a lot of scenarios… you want to pull for a shot and the plane just doesn’t… and the flaps may not be enough to get you there. Ironically, it reminds me a little of early jets now that I a flying out some of those.
Speaking of the Bearcat… the hate here surprises me a little. It’s an excellent little BnZ plane well suited to the low altitude fights common in ARB. It’s climb rate often lets it achieve positional parity early game, if not out right superiority. There’s not much a German a pilot can do to force a fight the Bearcat pilot doesn’t want to take.
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Bearcats are not good at BnZ, they have horrible compression and really suffer in handling above 600 km/h. They have amazing acceleration, climb rate up to about 3.5k and very good medium speed maneuverability so they are good at what Yaks do which is low alt energy fighting. Yaks still handle quite a bit better and probably have even more ridiculous acceleration than Bearcats, but then they get very little ammo. A 109 in 1v1 can still come out on top of a Bearcat pretty easily if it starts with an alt advantage. Harder to energy trap Yaks because of their completely fictitious acceleration and energy retention (and they are smaller).
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Any plane can easily overcome any other plane if it has an altitude advantage* within reason
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Which climbs to 5-6k faster? F8F or comparable 109s?
This is a very nice way to describe the very strange BR settings of the 109s and their adversaries. 👍
Over the last weeks i witnessed dozens of encounters in which it was obvious that the 109s were beaten by superior hardware (and not by pilot skill) at the same or much lower BRs. And even at very high alt: A plain I-225 at 5.0 flies circles around a 5.7 109 K-4 - their high alt power is insane and they turn like hell above 7 km. So good I-225 pilots drag the fights always very high.
In the P-47 D-28 i have to avoid any fight as soon as an experienced pilot uses a I-225. U can’t go head-on thx to 4 ShVaks and you can’t apply stall fight or BnZ tactics as they are faster, climb better and outturn you below 500 kmph IAS. My sole advantage is the high rip speed - but sooner or later i run out of altitude.
Even in my P-59A i need to prioritize Yak-3Us and I-225s. I have to ensure to fight in an undisturbed 1 vs 1- otherwise i have to outrun/outfuel them.
So what can a K-4, G-10 or G-14 do? They can’t outrun, outclimb or outturn these enemies…
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In theory 109s, but the alt normally tend to be similar and without a big alt difference 109s will struggle, cause u need at least say 3 rounds on the same spot to kill F-8F. 30mm is prob 1 round but that is given u can hit with that sluggish thing.
And not mentioning the shitty damage of the mg151/20
Mg151 deals plenty of damage. It’s just that most 20mms are massively overperforming.
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That’s one hell of a caveat “you can win easily IF you start with a substantial positional/energy advantage.” I should hope so ;-). That said, what many U.S. pilots learn early on is that they can sustain higher dive speeds, compress less at high speed, and have superior linear energy retention once the chase aircraft is co-altitude. Baiting people with superior climb into burning their advantage is an essential skill for U.S. prop pilots.
I got a laugh out of this (D30 vs. 109K). It’s nice when the game credits your “maneuver kill.”
Discussing purely the Bearcat is firmly OT here… once I figure out the syntax for spoiler tags I will square this away.
Bearcat Performance Discussion
To answer your earlier question, I just tested for you and got the following. Time to 5000m - 190s. Time to 6000m - 241s. That’s from ~100 m and 300 kph, wheels and flaps up. Climb rate had tapered off to ~20 m/s by the end. The climb rate is, of course, not the end of story, but certainly relevant.
As someone who flies primarily U.S. props with utterly shit high speed handling, the F8F is actually pretty good. It doesn’t really compress to about 675-ish kph. You want bad? That’s the Corsair and the Lightning… both awful. You want good? That’s the Thunderbolt. The Mustang and the Bearcat are “OK.” I guess that’s a balance feature by Gaijin - wouldn’t want B&Z to be too easy… might make all the guys holding the pitch key in flat turns angry ;-).
Anyway, my highlight recorder dumped all the temp files from before this month - but I sorted through a few games and found some F8F-1 BnZ. Getting to over 600 kph takes some doing. Funnily enough, of the 5 engagements I would categorize as BnZ, four of them were taking out 109s and 190s. The only time I was over 600 kph for the engagement was diving 1500 m for a 109G. So I guess that’s sort of related. In line with your observation above - if the Bearcat is above you in either a 109/190, you’re dead.
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[details="Click me for example"]
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Like this. You can quick-access it by clicking this gear:
Click me for example
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That clip was hilarious. You know bro was going 700 full wep in that dive without ever considering dropping it.
Bearcats are not good at BnZ, they have horrible compression and really suffer in handling above 600 km/h.
@Negativewaves
Regarding the bearcat. They fixed the rudder, it now controls as good as a p51 in a dive. The compression starts to get noticeable after 700 km/s but you can still aim. It’s no longer like it was before, where the rudder simply didn’t work.
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