Bf109s and FW190s are the worst experience i've had in this game

You’re missing the point about alt. Point being K4 can outclimb Bearcat at higher alts.
This is the first time I’ve seen any regard US planes at having shit high speed handling. The generally have the best high speed handling, the faster you are, the better they handle. IE P51H turning like a bomber at 300 km/h, but get it up above 400 km/h and it can pull insanely hard.

American planes have had a long history of being applied historical rudder compression at rates that other countries, notably Japan and Germany, have long gotten away with massively overperforming, non-compressing rudders. Some of these rudders have been buffed since, some haven’t.

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It’s pretty rare to see a 109 above me to any great degree in the F8F-1. Here’s one of two matches I played today (inspired by this thread). It’s a full up tier… and where are the 109s and 190s?

I suppose some of this can be blamed on the meta - it’s low to mid alt engagements almost exclusively in ARB. It can be quite challenging to actually single out another plane for a duel and then have the time and maneuver space to dictate moving the fight to higher altitude.

Further U.S. Prop Performance Aside

The Lightning and Corsair have generally poor maneuverability at any speed. For example, the P-38K/L EM diagram fits entirely inside those of the F8F-1 or P-51D-30. While their high speed compression isn’t much worse, it’s on top of an already sluggish air frame. The monster that is the F4U-4/B actually starts to compress around 550 kph on top of its poor maneuverability. I’m not saying that the Corsair isn’t strong, simply that it isn’t the high speed handling (or maneuverability in general) that makes it so.

Quite good actually.

the FF is not that good, and that was before. German 20mms suck now.

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Huh.
Sid not play them recently but the Swiss cannons were better than 151 in damage.
I prefered the 109 F1 over F2.

BF109s and FW190s are quite bad. Honestly German air isn’t particularly good in general. And no, we’re not talking about “historical” but in game.

Turn fighting is the easiest way to fight, and most players resort to it. Hell, the game in a way actively encourages it, with sending everyone into a giant furball of a fight.

German planes should be good at altitude, which doesn’t matter since most fights take place at low to mid altitude anyway. Sure you can climb forever, and probably join by the time the game is over if anyone even follows you up there. The control points are down below too, meaning you have to come back down anyway.

They are bad in ARB, and even worse in Arcade. Their guns are also pretty damn inaccurate, and Minengeschoss tends to explode after a short time traveled further nerfing it. The flight models also kinda suck.

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the biggest problem i find in all german props is the 20MM machine guns make me wanna just not play because im atleast decent at props and can out dogfight most players i face but every cannon shot lets me down and then one slip up they hit one round and removes my tail while ive already hit 4-5 on them its bull

Because somehow German guns even the 30mm usually net you “hits” even with air belts. Seriously German planes fly like lumbering pieces of junk in War Thunder. The Yak 9k casually outturns many of them. And when they hit they often do almost no damage.

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Honestly, if there’s anything going for the BFs (if anything), it’s that they can sometimes keep gaining speed even while climbing in a spiral, but that’s about it. That’s fine for an energy fighter (and I think only a handful of them can even do that anyway). They suffer in pretty much everything else they get thrown into, though at least they don’t have it quite as bad as the American props when it comes to overall balance.

The FWs get a bit of a saving grace in usually (if not always) having heavier armament than the BFs, plus better straight-line energy retention and rolling for BnZ. But we all know that already, and that’s basically the trade-off they get for not being marginally worse than, say, Italian props. Even those can still turnfight decently despite their handicap compared to the BFs and FWs. Same with Yaks, which have airframe instability in dives and that “rudder-brick” issue that happens to a bunch of planes.

I guess the BFs and FWs are best at “being bland but survivable,” like some sort of mayonnaise and not much else. Most other aircraft have some obvious drawbacks like the Yaks I mentioned (except the very last Yak-9UT), or the Zeroes being chained to a pole with their ~500 km/h top speed, or the P-51 line having terrible dogfighting ability 1-on-1. At least those planes have a defining flaw. The German ones don’t really, they’re just kind of… there.

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They’re “kind of just there” and aren’t really good at anything. And that they suck at turn fighting in WT, which is the standard mode of fighting pre missiles, suck at low altitude, and furballs. All of which are things the game actively encourages makes them pretty bad.

What they can do just doesn’t fit the play style and game very well, and often times you can find other planes which can do it better.

It’s even worse in Arcade IMHO, where they just plain suck.

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Yeah exactly, that’s kinda where they end up stuck. The stuff they can do “well” just doesn’t line up, but here’s where we enter this weird territory of “Schrödinger’s gameplay,” where either people get pushed into the furball and die from people playing high, or people playing high come down to a graveyard swarmed with turnfighters that are still alive (usually a product of the match’s nation lineup). So either you complain about your plane not being able to climb up to do its job (like most people do with the P-51 or 47, though for them it’s all they can do) or you complain about your plane being mediocre. Kinda like being a normal guy but then getting pitted against John Cena in wrestling or Usain Bolt in an endurance race.

As for Arcade, I haven’t really touched it since the last time I played console eons ago, but I can imagine how mediocre they are armament-wise probably comes out as their shackles more.

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This is due to the current High explosive bug

I searched the words ‘slat’ and ‘slats’ and there is not a single mention of them in this entire thread.
How about we talk about the fact that slats do not pop out under instructor? Was it done for balancing considerations, or accessibility considerations? Is it a bug or a feature? Affects the Me-262s too.

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They should deploy.

I agree that almost all the 109’s and 190’s are mid at best, expectially the “late” verisions (execpt maybe for the K4).
The more absurd one is the Fw 190 D9 (and D13) they’re have a terrible dogfighting ability, while it’s well documented on countless sources they were at the same level of a P51 a late Spit. or a Tempest.
Same with the P 51, a well documented agile plane that in the game flies like a truck.

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this is the best german fighter plane - if you can buy the Yak.

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P-51 handles very well in game. Try watching people fly it in sim.

Keep your speed up. If you stay fast in them they pull super hard. At least the C and H model do, the P51D30 is a pile of poop.

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Maybe it is but I just played it out of fun and had like 7 kills in three matches.
One match I killed 2 planes and 5 AI bomber.

I played the Fw 190 D-9 three times and got one kill from a head-on trade.

Not only is it difficult to get an angle on someone, the bad ballistics of the MG 131 and MG 151/20 just make it so difficult to get hits on a moving fighter.

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