… snipp….
I did some research of my own and I found out that Albatross D.Va and Pfalz planes all had one thing in common - they were heavy on controls and downright tiring to fly. And Pflaz DIIIa could easily stall on aggressive turn (much like Camel does in the game). So maybe if You are not going to fix FMs any more, then at least You could make it look like that - Sopwith Triplane and Nieuport 28 will finally be able to outturn the older Pflaz D.IIIa and Albatross D.Va simply because they are much lighter to easier to control by pilots.
Oh, and it would be nice if AI be fixed - so that every time a dogfight begins, the enemy will stop diving into the ground from like 3000 metres for no bloody reason other than to piss the gamer off, and attempt to fight back on the same attitude - Just like Udet vs Guynemer stood at about 5000 metres all the time. Especially since I have never seen a plane that escaped from the fight by diving.
And that aside from the infamous Campaign Award Glitch - either fix or tell us these awards: Hat in The Ring Start, Hat in The Ring Completion, Du Doch Nicht Medallion, Du Doch Nicht Souvenir and all the awards for St.Mihiel, are no longer available.
One should be weary of asking for a change just because of single references. Telling from scources I came across, the Albys were planes that were very nice to fly, you could fly them "with just two fingers" on the stick, whereas the pflaz required more force and was more sluggish on the controls.
The Udet vs Guynemer duel just has Udet as scource and what happened is not confirmed in any other scource. So it is a nice story, but no more than that.
Such events are also not very relible to get hard data on the planes. If two pilots fight it out in the real world, the loser usually gets the impression of the other plane having better qualities than his. An example is Cecil Lewis, when he told in his book 'Sagittaris Rising' the episode of Guynemeyer visiting 56 Squadron. A mock fight between Lewis (in his SE5a) and Guynemer in his Spad: Lewis could not shake him off, no matter what he tried. Lewis knew it was due to the pilot because the SPAD is not that more maneuvreable than the SE5.
Diving is not as useful in the sim because the player usually is very ready to take the risk following an opponent down low. Doing so over enemy territory exposed you to much more dangers as there are in RoF where you only have few places where people are shooting at you. And being below all other planes is also not so bad because if you don't make it home, you can restart the mission. Diving was common practise as well as spinning down playing dead. Strategy is ok, it's the circumstances that make it less reasonable. As soon as you know you are losing a fight, you don't stay to get killed. Down low you have an option to land. Up there, you die for sure when losing a fight.
It's clear that AI leves room to improve. But removing the dive I don't think would help much.
Z
Well, I suppose that's the biggest problem with sources - There are so many of them and You never know which ones are more reliable than others. Guess the only way to verify them is to actually fly the planes themselves - which itself is one hell of a challenge.
To be fair, yesterday, minutes after posting the post You responded to, I did try out Sopwith Triplane with two Vickers against Albatross D.Va and I managed to outturn it - YES, I said it, I have managed to outturn to shoot it down. And not once, but twice - That's because in Quick Mission I have a custom to land the plane after shooting down the enemy, and the first time I botched the landing.
So maybe I have some difficulty in synchronizing my hand on the joystick and yaw and that's why I have so much trouble in flying those Entente scouts - I say MAYBE.
As for the dive, I did not say to remove it - just make the enemy stop doing that in every dogfight for no real reason than to make You angry. It's infuriating for You if you have to climb back to say 3000 metres, but it's also illogical for enemy fighters, who presumably have missions of their own - So again, why would they do that? This is a kind of stuff that killed Manfred von Richthofen and Edward Mannock. They should know better.
