Me 262 in its proper tier

Machinery of War Discussion
180

Totally agree.

From my pov the whole thread deals with 2 main issues:

  1. The 262s are inferior to jets at the same BRs
  2. Their dominance vs props depends on your ability to bring guns on target.

Your conclusion that an air spawn of the 7.0 A-1a would make them more capable to BnZ props is correct, but this is mainly a theoretical pov as the reality in battles shows always a mix of enemy jets and props in the opposite team.

Even if you manage to find a prop on a way lower energy state - BnZing them is rather pointless if the prop sees you. If you try to drain his energy you lose speed and you make yourself a very easy target for getting 3rd partied - usually by an enemy jet.

So as long as the time to kill a prop is way too long (as the guns are not easy to use) a BR reduction of all 7.0 / 7.3 262s even to 6.7 won’t make a difference as imho the inferiority of 262s vs jets is the decisive factor in Air RB matches.

181

What would you propose then? The velocity on the guns is unfortunate, but I don’t think it’s far off of reality either.

Airspawns would help, but they don’t actually fix the plane.

182

I am working on a kind of experience report of flying the 6.7 262 A-2a and the 6.3 262 A-1/U 4. I flew about 80 matches with them (combined) and it was a great disappointment.

From my pov the policy of gaijin to consider a theoretical value like burst mass is killing the 262s - the burst mass is totally irrelevant if you are unable to hit anything.

As i have written earlier in this thread - either the 262s are too high or enemy jets are too low. And the enemy jets are the main problem - not the so called Superprops. I lost not a single plane to a prop fighter, but i manged to score kills whilst having 2 to 4 of them chasing me.

So without lowering the 7.0 and 6.7 versions to 6.3 the plane is simply not competitive. Even a good flown A2D-1 is able to neutralize you if you meet them on equal energy states.

I have zero problems to fly with a SM 92 at 4.0 vs any 5.0 fighter, even a J2M2 is killable if you can drag him above 8 km and enforce a high speed fight. But the 262s have not a single factor which can turn the tide.

Edit:

I watched a hell of replays of these matches and focused on good flown 7.0 and 7.3 variants.

It boils down that the majority of kills of the 7.3 version were results of long range head-ons with the MK 103s whilst the 7.0 versions scored mostly vs low strike aircraft and on distracted / tunnel visioned enemies. Both were outperformed as soon as they face a 7.0 jet and they deny a headon.

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183

Yeah. Makes like no sense to have both at the same BR, with that performance difference.
Zero point to play the MiG-9.

184

But planes are balanced by their performance.
Higher burst mass generally means that players are more likely to get a kill then not.

The Me 262s guns are balanced around hitting extremely hard but also being very unlikely to hit with their guns.

In a sense the MK 108 is the complete opposite of high velocity .50cals.

  • High damage but low chance of scoring hits.
  • Low damage but high chance of scoring hits.
185

The only opponents were the 262s burst mass plays a role are bombers. Unfortunately you will struggle to reach them before even a Do 335 would get to them… not so say other jets.

A quick fix strictly for the Me 262 A-1a could be:

  1. Classification as Interceptor + Airspawn

  2. Lower the BR to 6.7-6.3 to get away from other jets which just outclass it in every way

A decompression of jet ranks would be preferable but would require much more work from Gaijin which makes it more unlikely to happen.

Effectively this plane only has it´s speed going for it which is the main reason I fail to understand the argument of people that claim it would be overpowered on a BR reduction because no one could catch it. With e.g. the 6.3 Mustang, Bearcat and Tigercat you already encounter propeller planes which are currently rated much lower than a 262 but will outclass it in terms of energy retention as well as manoeverability and head on capability.

Even after the implementation of these suggestions the 262 would still be a niche plane, merely suited for bomber hunting and attacking unaware opponents like attackers while any aware opponent in a prop fighter plane can effectively deal with it. It would basically only get it from unbearable to at least useful in the right hands given the right conditions.

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186

Summary of this thread from my pov:

I see a consensus that the iconic Me 262 is very hard to use in Air RB.

From my perspective this is based on the following:

  1. Thanks to the downtiers of MiG 15 and F-86 the BR bracket below 8.0 is full of Korean war era jets which outperform the versions up to 7.3 by a substantial margin. Subsequently those versions see a high number of uptiers vs those jets.

  2. Even in partial downtiers with enemy props the 262s are not really effective vs those late and post war props (which never saw combat) thanks to the low velocity guns (MK 108) or accuracy nerfed 50 mm.

  3. If you analyse 262 matches within the BR range 6.7-7.7 most of the engagements are either head-ons or “mine, mine” trains - meaning a 262 gets chased by multiple opponents.

  4. Out side the 7.3 version with MK 103s head-ons are ill-advised as enemy HMGs or cannons outrange and outspeed MK 108s - their shells reach you before you have the chance to fire. Chasing 262s is often successful as the average enemy jet is faster.

The game play goal of winning a match an Air RB require to follow one of two approaches:

  1. Trying to bring down the number of enemies down as fast as possible or:
  2. Focus on the enemies with the highest threat level

The problem with 262s below 7.3 is that their guns prevent very fast & easy kills and enemy air spawn planes F-84s and even A2D-1s put so much pressure on 262 dominated teams (especially early game) that approach number 1 does not really work. Even if all enemies go low: The fights are dominated by head-ons - with the mentioned disadvantages for 262 pilots.

Focusing on the most dangerous opponents in 262s is not easy (to avoid the word impossible) as they outperform them in all aspects. Fighting a F-89 D with these bloody FFAR with proxy fuse is impossible in a 1 vs 1 if he sees you, killing of BIs works only (for me) if the make the mistake of landing on forward airfields.

If you try to see it from a holistic pov:

The purpose of a fighter is to kill enemy aircraft. The set-up of Air RB with markers and way too low contrail altitudes kills the surprise effect of a lightning attack. The BRs of the 262s are determined on the theoretical value of burst mass - and do not consider if you are able to bring guns on target or not.

Based on what i have seen the Me 262s are able to get kills vs totally oblivious opponents or they score 3rd party kills; otherwise their inferiority vs opponents at 6.7 / 7.0 prevents them from getting kills vs any experienced opponents. In other words: They are just good at killing noobs.

Proposed solutions (as a test run):

  1. Reduce the BRs of all Me 262s below 7.3 to 6.3 in Air RB.
  2. Replace the strike aircraft spawn of some versions with an interceptor spawn (=same alt but way closer to to own airfield = more time to build up speed and climb)
  3. Test it for 4 weeks and analyze the results

Expected feedback:

  • The main backlash will come from US/UK/USSR pilots which see currently 262s (without MK 103s) as free kills. All they have to do is to perform long range head-ons, dodge the MK 108s and run them down.

  • The enemy strike fighters won’t be affected, they are still able to perform their base bombing runs, enemy prop bombers are rather rare and would be farmed anyway by the Ta 152 H-1s.

But in order to be fair i would also sugtest to implement the following 2 aircraft:

  1. YP-80 A at BR 6.7
  2. Meteor F. 1 at 6.7

Both have way easier to use guns whilst being way slower (Meteor) or just a little bit slower regarding top speed (YP-80A) but with way slower critical Mach numbers.

So as we have some kind of equal footing at jets - what’s up with props?

  • Imho the main 2 prop opponents (Spit F. 22 & 24 and P-51 H-5) are either way to low in BR as their average pilot sucks (P-51s) or a little bit too low in order to protect them from MiG 15s / F-86s at 8.0.

  • Both can be extremely annoying in a 262 but they have basically the same role as a 5.3 A6M5 ko - waiting for mistakes of way faster aircraft and try to benefit from low and slow opponents. Aka as rat game play.

  • So the so called “superprop” fan boys would have to face actual challenges instead of having the benefit that their own undertiered jets deal with the 262s.

What impact would have 262s in full downtiers?

This is can be seen if you have flown the Me 262 A-1/U4. Even as i have not seen a single full downtier whilst flying them, the disadvantages vs props remain the same: Very hard to bring guns on target and to hit anything than a large target like a bomber.

In other words: Their main victims would be totally oblivious pilots - so no change to today.

Why gaijin won’t change anything:

You need no degree in quantum physics to come to similar conclusions and ideas to make a rather sad aircraft viable in Air RB. So the question is why we have this current mess in the 1st place?

  1. Imho gaijin just follows economic goals. 5 years ago Germany dominated prop Air RB and had even the dominating sub-sonic jet, the Canadair Sabre. Their choice to go for supersonics made the US & USSR market simply way more attractive as Germany had way less supersonic jet (premium) options and was until recently (Typhoon) not competitive in Air RB.

  2. So in order to earn money with top tier jets in way more attractive markets it makes sense to allow easy progress at jet entry ranks with mostly undertiered aircraft - especially if a large portion of players use Air RB just as grinding tool for their activities in Ground RB.

  3. Therefore i have little to zero hope that gaijin won’t even think about any changes of the positioning the Me 262s.

Out of the box thinking solution for 262s:

If we have a common understanding that the main weakness of the 6.7 - 7.0 versions are the MK 108s - why not find a solution for it?

  1. Imho every fight of an Me 262s with another jet (except the not implemented 2 exceptions mentioned earlier) is pure fantasy. They fight single prototypes which flew years later (like Su-9/11) or simply other aircraft which saw service long after VE day.

  2. Even considering that wt is no historic simulator i see an option for gaijin to solve the issue with the MK 108s by introducing a vehicle module which allows to exchange the 2 or 4 MK 108s with 2 MG 213 with the way more effective 20 mm shells (way higher MV than MG 151/20).

  3. I mean the R4Ms were effective vs bombers - why not assuming that the Germans would have come to the same conclusions that a weapon with a high MV and a high RoF would be better suited vs fighters?

  4. I saw a lot of posts by the fellow player @Ghostmaxi - he looks like an expert for aviation history, maybe he can add something about the likelihood of such options /field kits. I am quite sure that i read decades ago about planned (aka as Luft’46) aircraft carrying either the MG or MK 213.

Thx for reading and have a good one!

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187

Thank you, but i fear im not so much so an expert.
I do not know of more Me 262s with greater armamrent, tho my passed suggestion for the He 280 V5 could offer a alternative, duo to its armament of 3x 15 mm Mg 151/15 which would offer far better ballistics.

2 Likes
188

I believe there is a me262 version with 6 x mk108. Although that doesnt make it better

189

One issue is certainly that damage in WT makes no sense.

You simply lose a wing or tail from two 20mm HE hits, but they also kill your engine and your tail controls in a single hit.

But a single 30mm Mineshell does the same to a B-29.

As long as explosive damage is that effective while AP and Incendiary are just mediocre or simply useless, the firepower advantage of the Me 262 is pretty much pointless.

Not only do you have bad ballistics but the guns with better ballistic deal comperatively high damage.

Nevertheless the Me 262s are still pretty much unbeatable in down tiers.
Of course the same could be said about other 7.0 Jets.

1 Like
190

I would replace “unbeatable” with “untouchable” and add “just vs anything lower than 6.7”.

The problems are still the remaining 4 jets at 7.0 in the enemy team - so it solely depends on their hardware and pilot skills if you are untouchable in a downtier or not.

  • Even if they have just 4 AD2-1s - this thing is a beast and it takes ages to get in a non-head-on position and even longer to get away from them if you don’t want to sacrifice too much altitude. There is a reason why this thing is at 9.0 in Air AB - and the 262 A-1a just at 7.3…

  • And killing a good flown prop: See my previous comments above.

  • I agree i had fun in energy trapping some very ambitious Hornet and F8F pilots (especially those clowns using all-chat “come fight me coward” when you play 1 vs 7) , but the experienced prop pilots stay high and fast and tend to stick together (mainly JP and UK) so you have to get very close in order to hit something.

  • Getting close to multiple very fast props require a very high closing speed which increases their chances to dodge whilst your chances for hits decrease. And most of them have several hundred supersonic little friends - even a single hit kills one of your engines, you have to rtb and you get camped…

191

Sounds like it suffers from Wyvern syndrome.

People use it for ground striking and thus the performance (BR) against planes isn’t considered.

But not everyplane is a AD2-1 so the performance of the Me 262 doesn’t change in general.

Yes but that’s like in a 1 vs. 1 scenario or when you are outnumbered.
Same deal with Zeros, which other than being able to outturn every enemy and pulling insane AoA to get shots off, can’t really compete on their own.
But in a team game, you can get good results even when your plane isn’t ideal for every situation.

When the enemy is outnumbered they are basically at your mercy.

192

It´s expected from a down tier that you get a severe advantage which in the right, capable hands might even feel overpowered.

What stops you though to go into a head-on once you realize a Me 262 is chosing you as a target? It´s not manoeverable enough to dictate any better angle of attack.

Firing from distance and then quickly evading has good chances that your shells will do damage but you´ll get no damage in return, while even few .50 hits have a high chance to cripple a fragile 262 and if you are truly determined and want to do a sacrifice for the team, your chances are close to guaranteed that both of you go out of this encounter dead.

The 262 is a one trick pony that may appear incredible at first (when encountered in an uptier) but once you see through its capabilities it loses a lot of it´s fear factor and requires a lot more discipline from the 262 pilot to be flown effectively that you will encounter with most players within the average ARB matches.

There are other planes which are much more frightening in any 1 vs 3 situation of the last man standing, which is were the tactical gameplay usually truly starts.

3 Likes
193

@KillaKiwi

No offense man, but none of your points is really dealing with the core issues of the 262: Being able to get guns on target and to outfly opponents.

First you claim:

which is objectively seen wrong, as a 0.7 downtier is also a 0.3 uptier.

I ignored it and stated that even in a full downtier your claim a 262 is “unbeatable” is also objectively seen wrong as the quality of the 4 enemy 7.0 planes (mostly jets) is decisive and not a top speed advantage vs props.

In order to build a bridge i offered a way easier case with I claim that even 4 A2D-1 can mostly neutralize 4 Me 262 A-1a or Jabos.

Your next reply refers then to things like “team game” or enemies “being at your mercy when they are outnumbered” which are totally irrelevant for assessing the quality of a plane, which is determined by it’s quality to use a certain advantage to win a 1 vs 1.

In other words:

You assess the quality of a plane based on wrong parameters. The 7.0 262s are support planes at best and your best chance to support your team is trying to keep them alive and dragging enemies out of furballs in order to create number advantages in those fights.

If you invest some time in analyzing matches with non-MK 103 Me-262s involved you find rarely a match which is decided by them - other planes do the work most of the time, even in partial downtiers the quality of your prop mates is decisive, usually JP (J6K) or UK (F. 24 Spit) score the most kills and US teams are carried by F-80 A-5 and F-84s at the same BR of 7.0.

As written by the fellow player above:

The plane itself requires way too much effort and patience to be flown effectively. If you manage to stay alive in order to decide a match in a 1 vs 1 vs their last player the outcome depends strongly on the initial positioning and the quality of the enemy pilot. If your only chance to get a shot is a head-on you are doomed.

194

I overall agree with your analysis of the 262 in this thread, it’s better than what I could’ve done. In my opinion, an interceptor spawn, and a BR reduction of all non rocket 262s to 6.7 (with the rocket ones being 7.0 and 7.3/7.7) would be a great starting point. General decompression is also needed, but that’s true for any BR.

There’s also a non-zero chance that the He-162 is a better plane overall, but it’s 6.0.

Even facing off against the 6.3 variant isn’t that hard in most planes around 6.0. You will have the altitude advantage at all times, and it isn’t hard to get a 262 to slow down. A decently flown Me-262 in the 5.7-6.7 BR range would be able to survive due to its speed, but it might not be too effective in killing enemies.

This tracks with my own experience playing the squad version, as well as the C1A. They aren’t planes that can easily dictate fights, because their main advantage (speed) is negated when facing almost every plane above 6.7.

I prefer to call them partial downtiers. You’ll still face better enemies, but they will be limited in numbers.

1 Like
195

Thx man.

  • I flew around 80 matches (in December) in the 6.3 50mm and the 6.7 A-2a in order to validate my opinion with actual experience. My last 262 fights happened 20 years ago in IL-2 with FR settings :-)

  • Even as i am not representative for the average Air RB player as i use a Hotas and SFC with disabled instructor slides (which kills any form of accuracy = no head-ons) i was able to score some kills (53:15, max 5-7 AI).

  • But there was no real point in continuing with this - if your weapon system has not any form of a single, but decisive advantage in a 1 vs 1 and you are basically helpless vs similar experienced players in technically superior aircraft at the same BR there is no point in flying it.

  • I can win vs a 3.3 P-63 (with a good pilot) in a 410 at 3.3 with some smart decisions (like positioning, using his lack of high alt power or air brake, etc.) but the 262 gives me not a single option which puts me not in a disadvantage.

I slightly disagree regarding the altitude issue “at all times” - it is no problem to get up to 8-9 km, but you actually don’t need it. So if you see a bunch of Hornets at high alt right at the start of the game they are in 9 of 10 cases below 7 km when you arrive there.

As a side note here: I actually almost rammed a B-29 in heavy clouds at 8 km as i was following the contrail of a very high F-84. I managed to outclimb both, damaged the F-84 (idk why but he stall climbed) and ended up getting killed by return fire of the B-29 after i killed his plane…

Slowing down a 262 is dependent on the “commitment” factor of his pilot and the use battle tactic. As soon as you have no 7.0 enemy jets left in the enemy team you are untouchable if you keep your speed and have an eye on map borders.

I fully agree.

  1. The 6.3 version suffers imho extremely from the accuracy nerf some years ago and the inconsistency of the available ammo. On top of that the 50 mm overheats like hell (i would estimate that in two thirds of my matches my gun jammed without any kill) and precise follow up shots are imho impossible. The pinnacle of disappointments was a center mass hit on a (stationary as landed) BI with 50 mm HE, no kill. Several P-51s survived hits with the AP rounds in their wings (i watched the replays) fired in 90 degree dives.

  2. The MK 108 is not much better even as i tried upfront to find the right convergence settings in testflights - so i had (and still have) severe issues to find the right lead. Even as this might be rooted in my Hotas usage (i use virtual cockpit when attacking) - the gun produced on top at lot of hits which don’t rewarded me with a kill.

Best strategies (for me) in getting kills vs props:

It sounds strange, but most of my kills in the 6.7 version happened in slight downtiers playing 1 vs all. Basically all of these matches followed the same pattern:

3-5 fighters behind and below or above me
3-5 fighters murdering my tickets

The trick to get kills was always to keep the chasing fighters as close as possible behind me and to keep them in a group. At the same time I fly a wide loop bringing them out of the center. By watching the scoreboard, the kill feed and vanishing own ground units you can predict where some of the other guys are.

Most effective way to get kills was to approach the enemy forward airfield from behind. So in a best case scenario you can catch one or 2 guys landing/reaming. As the firing time even on stationary targets is very short when you come in with 1.000 kmph i missed a lot of MK 108 shots or got often just hits - so i tried R4M salvos which granted me 2 double kills despite they not really fly straight. The 3-5 fighters behind you had zero chance to catch me.

The majority off my other kills were either pilots trying to pitch up and stalling in front of me (USN pilots excelled here), totally oblivious ground pounders or tunnel visioned guys trying to get a kill in front of them and not watching their six. With enough time and ammo even i (with my potato aim) am able to kill such guys.

So as written earlier:

  1. Best usage of 262s vs props is (from my pov) to keep a large part of enemy superprops distracted / occupied and allow your team to have numerical superiority on other parts of the map. Very effective here is running into them with rather high speed and pulling them out of the center whilst disrupting their climb. 3 or 4 fighter leaving the center chasing you is always helpful.

  2. The sad reality is often that (in cases this worked) your team starts either immediately ground pounding, going low vs enemy attackers or simply RTB. Just a few experienced pilots realize that trying to get altitude is a smart idea, so mainly JP and UK pilots (which already climbed) and a few battle hardened Ta-152 H-1 pilots are able to benefit from these efforts.

  3. Imho part of the problem is that very good pilots flying Germany at around 7.0 are a minority - i saw just a few, most of them in coordinated squads. I mean they are not wrong - why should they invest a hell of time and energy to get kills with a highly overtiered plane?

1 Like
196

If we have a common understanding that the main weakness of the 6.7 - 7.0 versions are the MK 108s

This is the one part of your post I’d consider not fully accurate, and it isn’t by much. The Mk 108s are definitely difficult to use, and severely hamper the performance of the aircraft, but I would say that the Me 262’s largest problem is the engines, which are so far weaker than nearly everything it faces that even before trying to fire your Mk 108s you have to almost entirely rely on luck or the enemy’s incompetence to position yourself against them. This also leaves you entirely defenseless if anyone on the enemy team decides to mark you down.

The rest of your post is awesome, and I honestly don’t have anything to expand on or comment on in any way, because it fully encompasses all aspects of this conversation and all solutions that can be sought. Even my note above about the Mk 108 is mostly a difference of priority/perspective. This can be considered the ultimate post that any future discussion in this topic should be based on, I think.

I wrote this post several days ago but only now posted it because the forum thought I haven’t been playing the game for some reason.

2 Likes
197

I played the Jabo for quite a few matches and it’s quite alright at 7.0.

However I would never fly out the Me 262 without air spawn again. Starting with zero energy on the ground makes fighting props almost impossible since they always have the energy to evade your attack while you slowly need to built up speed for a single pass and I don’t even want to think about fighting more competetive Jets.

The air spawn of the Jabo is literally what makes it decent and is a night and day difference compared to the regular Me 262.

198

I played A-1a often, then I played the 50 mm swallow… I’ll leave the others for when I’m in the mood…
You can play with all of them, the problem is that many planes need altitude and on the maps that are in the game, you rarely manage to get it before the outcome of the battle is decided…
I like to remember the old, large map of the area under Moscow (Naro-Fominsk, etc.) …
Before you reached the battle area, you needed 5-10 minutes …
But you got above 5000 meters, where most of the players were at that time…
Then there was a problem with a lot of players, because they attacked with any plane, in the style of the Holy Grail of this game (head-on is extra TOP)…
And they started crying terribly that they were flying somewhere for 10 minutes and then the game was over in 2 seconds…
So the map went into the trash…
Personally, I would welcomed a longer map, airstart for all aircraft, graded by altitude, according to aircraft type and target only type of base, factory, missile base and airport, minimum ground AI …
This way you could play really interesting air battles …

I switched from mouse/keyboard to joystick in RB (Lgt Xtreme 3d) and at the cost of a slight loss of accuracy, I got a much better feeling of flying the aircraft and for example the Me-262 (which has a flight model of a heavy fighter, which it also is) does not lose speed so much, but of course you need to fly it a little differently…

199

As the 262 was already mentioned in the BR adjustment thread i added a post regarding the He 162:

I included a current example of the range limitations of MG 151/20 to it - i dove on a Spit and had a maximum firing range of ~ 800 meters.

Regarding 262s:

I scored recently my first 3 kill match in the 262 A-2a at 6.7 - with MK 108s!!!

To be fair: I played 1 vs 10 and i got those kills with 3 high speed visits of the enemy forward airfield but i get better with MK 108s and the 2 of the guys 2were not moving…with 98% thrust a fuel load of 18 minutes is enough for a 25 minute match.