There’s a reason why many consider these matches 1v15 or 1v31, and that’s because your team is just enemies in blue. I’ve been hit by missiles when I dogfight in top tier, but I’m the one that gets banned because I called them a mean name when they’re the ones trying to TK me.
If you’re in a stock-plane lacking its necessary weaponry/performance upgrades, then head-ons make sense.
However, in a fully spaded plane at propeller brackets, avoiding the head-on isn’t really a skill or risk management concept. If you have higher energy (higher speed, higher altitude or ideally both) - avoiding the head-on costs you nothing and you will come out with significant advantage over your opponent.
The skill manifests more in masking your energy & reading the opponent trying to do the same. By masking your energy, you can make the opponent think they have the advantage and thus present you with a very easy shot after the head-on pass.
If you watch Defyn’s videos, he’s constantly remarking along these lines - you had more energy, why take the head-on? It’s needless risk.
He also made a good tutorial series on how to exploit energy-differences after the head-on pass to secure a low-speed kill.
Time stamped for ease of viewing:
Also, this isn’t yet dogfighting. You’re just avoiding being threatened while trying for a fast kill. Now, this does require a somewhat accurate aim so if you miss this opener, it will devolve into a dogfight or the parties resetting for better conditions.
I dont commit to head ons. I go for a head on and divert just before its a full commit so that I’m already turning to get on their tail.
this is far safer to do and gives a high chance of a kill
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Most people do that. But it’s still relatively risky.
I play spitfires so its basically free.
works good in a harrier too as you can force a turnfight that will bleed anything that isn’t an F5 out of all energy and they will eat a volley of 30mm without much hesitation
Because head-on people dont know any better than that.
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I think the proliferation of head ons in the game is dues to a few factors.
#1 being . . the sense that there is a lack of “consequence”, meaning, most that do head ons with the delusion it is a good “tactic” simply do not care if they lose their plane or not. The intensity of the “grind” in the game seems to cause a great many to do things that ultimately are detrimental, even tho they get the short term
satisfaction of a kill. I play mostly Air AB and watching the vast number of players that do the same thing over & over is . . . disturbing. But it is “meta” I guess and very very common. They find a target, fly straight at it going as fast as they can, guns blazing and hope to get a hit/assist/severe damage or kill. Their own safety is of little to no concern. “High risk, low reward” a less than efficient way to go about things.
There are ofc instances where it is not that bad of an idea, lesser of evils if you will. Your plane is damaged, you’re going down anyway, may as well take someone with you . . . I do this now and again. Or you simply have no choice as circumstances can force you into these situations as well.
I am no pilot, never claimed to be, but there are things one should consider about how it all works when it comes to aerial combat. The entire premise is ofc, get them before they get you and stay alive as long as possible. Any fighter pilot should recognize that the main objective is to stay out from in front of an enemy’s guns, at all times if you can.
Flying directly into them intentionally is just . . … I have no words . . .
An act of desperation . . unwanted, but plausible . . anything else, just not that smart . . . to me anyway.
Of ALL the different angles of approach when attacking an enemy plane, the graph below shows the two WORST approaches . . top being #1, bottom #2 .
I am just a gamer, but some things you just figure out on your own.
Going head on as a “tactic” . . . yeah, that ain’t one of them I choose to do as long as I have other options . . .
This doesn’t happen if you do the head-on properly. The problem is most people don’t have the right strategy, they open full fire until they see the opponent blow up but that causes two things:
- The opponent’s rounds hit them too and they are severely damaged
- Both planes often don’t pull out in time and crash into each other
To avoid this, the best strategy is to fire just a small burst aimed right and timed right and then suddenly turn before the opponent’s rounds get to you. Usually they won’t react fast enough and eat your bullets while you survive unharmed. In the worst case they’ll react properly and turn too, but then you’re in a turn fight which you can win with skill.
Head-ons are something problematic for beginners but once you get it right you leave 90% of them unharmed
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I know the specifics…I’ve been playing for many years.
All I’m saying is, why people prefer head ons.
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And that’s too bad for them, and too good for you
I only do head on when
- Theres only a few enemies left, sometimes i cant find an engagement in the entire game
- My plane is critically damage, cant turn, cant perform movement without flat spin or lose one wing
- Head on dive or head on pull up, fire and dodge 60/40 survival chance, 70/30 guarantee kill
I play 8.0 and 11.0
There are many ways of headons, but i think we are talking about full commit headons:
Because most players have no clue how to fight properly or play ARB properly at all.
Why full commit headons?
Why dogfighting with lower energy state?
Why dogfighting zeros?
Why killing wrong ground targets?
Why not climbing in props?
Why chasing faster planes through the whole map?
Why dying on af aa?
It’s everytime the same answer.
If you have the right tactic and a good positioning, there is no need for headon at all.
But even then sometimes headon make sense. Fake headons for example or your in a plane with good weapons like MK 103 or good stealth ammo so you can headon with somewhat of safety.
im your biggest fan tiger_tank_1 thanks for the comedic relief
4 Likes
Short term and long term rewards.
With a full commit headon, you don’t need to spend much time learning how to play, you just get a die roll for a kill.
But to dodge and dogfight, you need to spend a lot of time to learn how to do so, which is rewarded only in the long term.
People are more likely to choose the option that rewards them in the short term. Which also results in people suicide climbing at your energy traps, as spending time learning how to do reversals takes a lot more time and effort than just getting a lucky shot pulling 90 degrees up.
I always avoid head on engagements if I can. Any good pilot (especially IRL) would always choose better odds than 50-50.
I would rather die in good dogfight and learn something from it than die in head on where luck is a big factor.
4 Likes
Win-win if you have a gunpod
I always assumed it was the popularity of games like Ace Combat Zero which glorify headon engagements (especially in its final boss fight) as a major culprit.
These days though, I headon when I know my plane is hopelessly outmatched and/or I simply don’t care to actually try.
R2Y2 life…
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Some of us speak Klingon rather well.
I think mouse aim can also be blamed.
Without mouse aim, “head-ons” are just passing each other because in my experience 95% of the time, people don’t want to risk crashing into the other aircraft for what’s likely going to be a miss anyway.
In sim, I’m constantly doing head-ons without either of us shooting the other. Not being able to ID the aircraft from up front also discourages shooting.
See enemy plane, try to climb over it then nose down to try and mask energy advantage, zip past then turn either towards them, away from them or dive to gain separation if it looked like a zero or spitfire.
If I did the same approach in ARB, I’d get shot to pieces.
Now, nearly all tutorials for “How to dogfight?” are made assuming flight stick and rudder, not mouse aim. Requiem’s BFM playlist, various DCS tutorials, IL2 tutorials. Only Defyn and similar WT ARB people emphasize the difference.
So as a devil’s advocate: Assume someone is familiar with realistic dogfight principles and aircraft duels. Now they get put into Warthunder where you can point the mouse at a guy 800 meters out and score a hit.
Result = Lethal Headons rather than this:
That's a P-47 and a Bf109 flying head-on to each other. Both players are considered highly competent and skilled.
Not only mouse aim, but I’d daresay the bright red “idiotmode red markers” are an even bigger culprit. Because with those, you can ID planes well outside their potential engagement ranges until the advent of long-range guided munitions. If you can even ID the general plane class, you can adjust how you approach.
In my experiences with dogfights over Ground RB maps, people don’t always open fire from quite as far out, because they don’t always know what they’re shooting at. Likewise during the one 2018 weekend Markerless RB Air EC event featuring 5.0-6.3 planes in years past which had Sim-style near-absence of markers.
While I do agree that mouse aim certainly does enable Headon Thunder, I also plainly see that Air RB will flat-out never even consider removing it, as the easy controls are what helped this game grow to what it is today. Unlike every other flight sim, you don’t need a full (potentially expensive) setup.
Mouse controls and 3rd person camera are simply too basal to the game’s popularity to be open to change much. At best I can see modifying instructor behavior to make planes stall out and spin, but then recover automatically, to stop the “helicopter upward defying physics” stunts.