Why is the P-51D such a nightmare to play?

Game Discussion Realistic Battle
,
13

I played the P-51D-30 recently (just before air superiority patch) and went about 6:1 during those sessions playing mostly solo.

  1. Use MEC. 100% prop pitch, about 80% radiators. Best climb speed is 250 IAS at the start of the game. You will never overheat, and the climbrate will surprise you.
  2. Sideclimb, but not too much. Friendlies are best used as distractions. I sideclimb harder if I see that my team is going low or if I see that my team composition is weak since I want most of the impatient enemies to dive off early game.
  3. When attacking, roll so your wings are perpendicular to the enemy’s direction of travel; putting lead on the enemy should be 100% elevator, no rudder involved. This skill helps in all planes but especially D-30.
  4. Don’t be afraid to spray in the headon. D-30 sucks at dodging headons, so make them dodge first. You paid for all your ammo, so use it.
  5. Work on target priority. Killing the right guy at the right time is more than going for fighters instead of bombers - it’s which fighter is the most dangerous at this point in time. Killing 1-2 of the right guys usually decapitates the enemy team and winning is easier after that point. Having a rough game is often because you failed to do this or it was not possible.
  6. Don’t be afraid to take the 1v1 with bf 109s. At high speed D-30 wins. At low speed, it loses. Wrap up the fight quickly.

The rest is just a litmus test of how well you know air RB… the more you know about playing this game the more you will exploit the D-30’s potential. It is not a bad plane and could justifiably go to 5.3 together with the 190 D-9.

some games you just need to go 101% aggressive if you see that you’re in a bad situation and about to be chased by 3 dudes if you don’t do anything. It’s just a game, if you die learn from it and go to the next one.

4 Likes
14

US props aren’t overtiered, they just don’t fit the meta well. The US designed planes for real life. The realities:

  1. Fighters were almost always in the air and at altitude before engaging enemies. Airfield starts in RB are extremely unrealistic.
  2. Fighters would almost always have advance information of enemy location and altitude whether from RADAR, coast watchers, or reports from allied bombers.
  3. If 1+2 weren’t true, no fighter could be effective.

When you read about WWII fighters, especially US, they are always at a pre-selected altitude searching for enemies. The game meta where both sides start on the ground and race to climb above one another was something that almost never happened.

If you played during the brief time where Gaijin gave P-47s an interceptor start, you remember how gloriously overpowered they were. They were designed to be at altitude and speed before engaging, so when the game allowed them to do that they were suddenly amazing.

But because of the unrealistic ground start US planes generally don’t perform near their potential. It’s especially a problem because they can’t climb to compete with their contemporaries, but when they have their BR reduced to fight earlier props, earlier props are all lighter and more agile.

P-51 is far from the worst US plane though. If you can just survive the initial merge when all your enemies are above you, it’s pretty good.

12 Likes
15

So you’re saying that because of game design decisions US planes artificially perform worse than the planes of similar BR, so in other words they are overtiered.

2 Likes
16

Dropping the BR won’t help. A P-51 can’t outclimb or outturn lower BR planes either. US planes can’t handle the low-altitude, low-speed turn-fights.

You can make US planes work at their current BRs if you accept that you can’t climb above your enemies and get your level speed up. In the initial merge, US planes are support fighters. After that, when everyone is at speed, they are a lot better.

Just had to play though the P-51D-20 grinding the Israeli tree, and it’s a lot better if you play it that way. Climb early, but stay near your team. Don’t be the first to engage, and don’t dump altitude too early. If the enemy insists on staying high, kill ground targets for tickets. A P-51 at 300+ mph IAS is a threat whether it’s low or high.

1 Like
17

If you’d rather have a quicker turning aircraft, try the ad-4. It is surprisingly good in a dogfight, I have killed many me262 and prop fighters with it and it is excellent for grinding. You can take 3 aircraft laid magnetic mines with have higher TNT equivalent than regular 1000lb bombs, plus attack aircraft spawn so u can shoot down a 288, bomb base, kill 1-2 enemy fighters and ground pound till ammo is gone. I used it to grind my first jet and if u look at my stats it is my #1 vehicle in game. I love it.

1 Like
18

There just are ways you could drop the BR to make them comparable, the literal only issue with it is amount of firepower the dropped-BR planes would have.

The way I see it - going off of turn time and rate of climb - I would change US Rank III props through this:

  • Drop all P-47’s to Rank II with a max BR of 3.3 for most and 3.7 for the chrome ones (comparing the best P-47 to the 3.0 Bf 109 F-2, 3.3 La-5F, 4.0 Fw 190 A-4, and 3.3 P1Y1 mod. 11)
  • Move F4U-4 to 4.3 (comparing to Spitfire Mk Vb and Bf 109 F-4’s)
  • Change BR of P-38-5-LO to 4.3
  • Change BR of F8F-1 to 4.7 (comparing to Spitfire Mk Vc)
  • Change BR of F6F-5N to 3.3 (comparing to La-5F) and move to Rank II
  • Change BR of P-63A-10 and P-63C-5 to 3.7
19

Reading this as a whole, you mix some things up, and imho you are wrong with some (ok, all) conclusions about US fighters and US players in general.

  1. WT community in US props:
    US is one of the big 3 nations and extremely popular. Almost everybody wants to play iconic US fighters as fast as possible. This leads to a high ratio of rookies playing them - you have basically the same effects in Ground RB with Germany (“Germany suffers”) and Tiger I players. In other words: Flying with or allocated to US plane dominated teams is usually a real pain, almost every time a mixed bag and not really tempting for experienced players unless you fly in a squad and/or you can make them work.

  2. WT meta In US props:

  • The attributes “climb and turn” are decisive in wt as climb helps to get positional advantage and most less experienced players tend to start turn fights whilst being under pressure - instead of relying on their advantages “speed” and to a certain degree on “armament”. The focus on high altitude performance was a doctrinal issue due to the “Germany first” approach of the US and the USAAF in particular in the ETO.
  • So if irl events led to focus on high alt performance and most Air RB matches are decided at lower altitudes, you have the root cause of your pov. - and that stuff like the P-47s, P-38s were at least in Europe (except 56th FG) withdrawn from A2A duties (due to a lack of performance) should give you another indicator that history is biased.
  • For stuff like fighters active in the Pacific - after mid 1942 the IJA and IJN were out of trained pilots, like the Luftwaffe in Spring/Summer 1944. So it became a turkey shooting in the Pacific and war of attrition above Germany decided by numbers and lack of fuel for flight operations and pilot training since 1941 for the Luftwaffe boys…
  • To deal with “climb and turn” issues - wt gave the US players a hell of very capable fighters with air spawn - with alt advantage there is no need for “turn” if you are faster and can play energy.
  1. WT battle ratings for US planes
    Imho you are flat wrong with your assumption that US planes are overtiered. Most of them are severely undertiered, like 2.7 P-39 N, the 3.7 P-51 C or the 4.7 F4U-4 (=the same plane like the 5.7 F4U-4b with 20mm).
    The problem is that the experience level of their pilots is way too low, some planes need certain play styles to make them work and enemy aircraft usually climb and turn better.

Lowering BRs for US planes is imho already in place, only experienced pilots benefit, rookies will still die due to lack of experience. Btw - US fighters were clapped above Europe in every fight on equal terms until the end of 1943, so you might lower your expectations…

3 Likes
20

Domt forget the super charger on p51’s. At some altitudes they not have much power till the supercharger gear shift. You zn watch the booster in cockpit to kmow when

21

Lol these suggestions are silly

P47D28/30 are solid 5.3, others are fine where they are at
P51D10/30 should sit on 5.0/5.3 respectively as well
P51C should sit on 4.7
F4U-4 is fine where its at, the least retarded Corsair
P38 are fine where they are at
F8F-1 should be 5.7
F6F5N should be 4.0
P63s should stay where they are at, could even get a 0.3 raise if you ask me. The A-5 sits criminally low at 3.3 and really shouldn’t be there

comparing the best P-47 to the 3.0 Bf 109 F-2, 3.3 La-5F, 4.0 Fw 190 A-4, and 3.3 P1Y1 mod. 11

My god.

F8F-1 […] comparing to Spitfire Mk Vc

Lol.

You could give US mains a P47D28 at 1.0 and they would still cry. Need more handhold than you already have? This is so out of place with the US playerbase:

image

12 Likes
22

My dude this entire thread is about how US props suck because of Gaijin’s game design, how tf are US props if that is the case?

F8F-1: 4x 12.7mm, 19.0s turn time (TT for brevity), 25.2 m/s rate of climb (RoC), currently 5.0

Yak-3: 1x 20mm + 2x 12.7mm, 17.4s TT, 21.3 RoC, currently 4.3
Typhoon Mk Ib/L: 4x 20mm, 19.5s TT, 19.5 RoC, currently 4.3
Bf 109 F-4: 1x20mm + 2x 7.92mm, 19.0s TT, 20.0 RoC, currently 4.0

What I compared it to initially → Spitfire Mk Vc: 4x 20mm, 16.2s TT, 19.7 RoC, currently 5.0

I’m revising my statement, the F8F-1 should be 4.3 actually (maybe 4.0), not 4.7.

P-47D-22-RE: 8x 12.7mm, 25.0s TT, 10.0 RoC, currently 3.7
P-47D-25: 8x 12.7mm, 25.0s TT, 10.6 RoC, currently 4.3
P-47D-28: 8x 12.7mm, 23.0s TT, 14.1 RoC, currently 5.0
P-47N-15: 8x 12.7mm, 30.0s TT, 14.0 RoC, currently 4.7

La-5F: 2x 20mm, 21.2s TT, 15.6 RoC, currently 3.3
I-185: 3x 20mm, 22.0s TT, 18.5 RoC, currently 3.7
Spitfire Mk IIb: 2x 20mm + 4x 7.7mm, 15.1s TT, 19.4 RoC, currently 3.7
Sea Hurricane Mk IC: 4x 20mm, 17.0s TT, 8.0 RoC, currently 3.0
Fw 190 A-1: 2x 20mm + 4x 7.92mm, 20.2s TT, 14.1 RoC, currently 3.0
Fw 190 A-4: 4x 20mm + 2x 7.92mm, 22.0s TT, 14.1 RoC, currently 4.0

Yeah my suggestion for all P-47’s to be 3.3-3.7 seems to be holding up.

(Will likely be reusing plane data I’ve already typed at this point since it’s 3:00am)
P-51C-10: 4x 12.7mm, 21.0s TT, 16.2s RoC, currently 3.7

Purely going off of the planes provided above for the P-47’s, the P-51C could probably go to 3.3.

P-51D-30: 6x 12.7mm, 20.0s TT, 22.7 RoC, currently 5.0

Going off of the planes listed previously (in the F8F-1 section), it could go down to 4.0-4.3 actually.

P-38J-15: 1x 20mm + 4x 12.7mm, 21.5s TT, 19.6 RoC, currently 4.3
P-38L-5-LO: 1x 20mm + 4x 12.7mm, 22.0s TT, 19.3 RoC, currently 4.7

Same spiel, these could go to 3.7 actually.

F6F-5N: 2x 20mm + 4x 12.7mm, 21.0s TT, 11.8 RoC, currently 4.3

Same spiel, could go down to 3.3

Anyways I’m going to go to sleep now but yeah as you can see my suggestions are reasonable.

1 Like
23

everything you’ve written here is a fantasy and flies in the face of historical records, in which the P-47D equipped USAAF and their British allies broke the back of the Luftwaffe in 1943.

2 Likes
24

The biggiest nerf to US planes was when they reduced the timer to 25min thus not allowing such planes as the pP1D 20NA to get into orbit before the battle ends 😆

1 Like
25

US teams are horrible at any tier. For whatever reason, we are bad, so any good plane in USA looks bad because your team is happy to get 40% WR.

Most US planes dont need to sideclimb to 6k, they need to stay out of sight until the whole enemy team goes low and then farm the guys in the furball. You don’t need to be the highest plane in the lobby, just higher than the planes fighting you.

As for P-47s I suggest giving the D-22, D-25 and N-15 variants airspawns and raising their BRs to the 4.3-5.0 range (I don’t see why P-47N should be higher than P-38L even with an airspawn. It’s just a heavy chonker that dies to 2 rounds of shvak).

If you ‘just sideclimbed’ and then played top-to-bottom the P-47D22 used to be good and the D25 was okay but the maps were not designed for 16v16 and now when you lose there’s 5 dudes on you and 5 dudes after tickets. So P-47s really need a way to stay relevant.

1 Like
26

I agree for the most part but the D-25 and N-15 have zero match presence. You don’t perform well enough to survive long down low and your firepower doesn’t mean as much as it used to considering what shvaks have become. So you have nothing to work with and the 4.0 P-63 is better at its job than you.

1 Like
27

Found someone who goes of statcards for performance :) my point still stands. First go figure out if statcards are correct and how those numbers on them actually came to be and what they mean. Your suggestion is bonkers.

3 Likes
28

Explain how, because so far I’m the only person using actual scientific evidence in my argument. So far when I’ve gone into the datamines the values for the things I’ve checked have been correct (and I’ve searched up a lot of stuff), so I don’t feel the need to check every single one of the tens of values I provided for you.

29

I like what you said there. I would like to add, side climb till both teams meet and the furball starts to drop, then bomb in, zoom out

30

Scientific evidence?

Go do test flights and actual in game measurements of performance RoC, top speed at different altitudes, turn rate, turn radius, and what not. Then go compare to statcards. This game is over 10 years old and well known.

Those values in the datamine around what you posted, are the values for wiki and statcard. They have nothing to do with actual plane performance. Take P47D28 for example, those values are derived on full fuel and weapon loadout. Who does that? Now go look at values on minfuel and clean.

What those values also don’t tell you is about compression values at speed, acceleration, low speed handling, roll rate, turn radius.

It’s just some static numbers arrived on using a specific weapon/fuel load at a specific altitude, and these configurations also differ per plane, by nation, you cannot compare them.

31

My dude how would the literal code of the game change from the files to during flying?

32

That’s NOT the code of the game. And read my edit above.
Without you going to go do actual testing, your comments are useless.

But you want a simple example? Sure.

P47D28
Actual rate of climb on 20 minute fuel and clean wings is 19.7 m/s from 0 to 6000 meters (average RoC over the whole distance). Now lets look at RoC from 4000m to 6000m, this would be 19 m/s.

Fw190A4
Actual RoC on 20 minute fuel and clean over the same distance is 16.8 m/s. Again, lets look at 4000-6000m, this comes at 15.7 m/s.

Nevermind about top speed, P47 is faster at any altitude. It can also turn with a 190 if it wants. A 190A4 isn’t going to do anything at all against a P47D28 and they can already meet each other being 1.0 BR apart… and you are here saying not only should they meet on the regular, but a P47D28 should be meeting 2.3-2.7s… LOL

You see where all your data falls apart now?

I don’t even know why you are arguing here at all, your most flown US prop is the P38L and you have altogether 5 games in it with 6 kills, the next thing is a P38J and you have 5 games in it too with 0 kills. Maybe first do a little searching in yourself if its really the plane that’s bad. Oh sorry, you also flew the P61 which is great fun, 10 games with 1 kill and 9 deaths. You have no games whatsoever in any other nation except 5 wholes games in Germany with reserve planes an the He100.

You clearly fall into the “New player picks US and claims the nation sucks” category.

9 Likes