Originally posted by Steve
Rgr Urch, exactly what I meant earlier when I posted that I felt it was well balanced. A good pilot is a good pilot, regardless of plane.
any of the accomplished turnfiters could get a bit of practice and be doing fine in an energy plane. Same can be said for the speed guys gettin in the turnders. I do occasionally and have a blast.
I agree with this under certain conditions, let me explain. As I mentioned in an earlier post on this thread, most players learn to TnB LONG before they ever consider Energy Fighting in its pure form. How many times have you heard newbie#123456 ask on country or open channel, "What is a good plane for a new person to start with?", the answer is invariably, Niki or Spitfire. Have you ever heard a veteran recommend a new player start with a Fw190, P51D, or P47D-30? The simple fact is, Energy Fighting requires alot more in terms of specialized skills to be succcessful with, it requires everything TnB requires plus some. While I believe your statement is entirely correct for upper echelon players, I don't believe it would hold true for your average person, who lacks years of experience.
When you TnB, for the most part, you are focussed on one enemy, you manuever in a way that affords the best chance of saddling up on his six, you generally are very close perhaps 300 yards or less away in a relatively equal E state, while maeuvering in-plane with him. The gunnery solution in this standard scenario is very simple, it would be hard to miss. I can back this up with personal evidence, my hit % with my wife's account last camp was a full % higher than with Zazen, and I was trying to be more accurate with Zazen.
So, let's compare this with a typical energy fighting scenario, the BnZ. Let's assume you have some altitude on a target but he is aware of your prescence. You position yourself above his rear quarter, trying to come from a blind spot in between views, you chop throttle and begin your decent. He sees your bounce commence and evades, for the sake of argument let's say he reverses to force you to attack his forward quarter, a typical counter to the bounce. Now, as you approach gunnery range (typically longer than 400 yards due to rate of closure), instead of having a target that is equal in E state, in an in-plane maneuver with you 300 yards out, you have a vast disparity in E states, with a target that is maneuvering out-of-plane 400 + yards out, presenting you with a high deflection frontal quarter shot at a high rate of closure and deflection against a target that either can inherently outmaneuver you or can outmaneuver you temporarily as a result of relative E states (more E is not necessarily a good thing) and possibly control compression on your part. That my friends is NOT a simple gunnery solution.
The point I am making is, from a gunnery perspective especially, Energy Fighting is exponentially more challenging. Just because someone has some yank and bank experience and can be modestly successfull in a Spitfire does not necessarily mean he has the gunnery aptitude to be equally successful in an Energy Fighting role. I would even go so far as to put some ballpark numbers on it. I would contend that a person who TnBs exclusively, but consistantly has less than a 10% hit% (assuming he doesn't strafe ground targets in fighter mode), would have very little success Energy Fighting, perhaps the only consistant kills he would get would be those where the enemy was unaware of his prescence (fixated or not paying attention), bombers and suicide jabo types that refuse to drop their load and evade.
Subjectively, I can verify what I am saying from direct arena experience. If I am being bounced and am aware of the bouncer, I can successfully evade him 99% of the time. However, if I am the bouncer and the enemy is aware of me I am still a 75% chance or better of getting a critical shot in (resulting in his plane ceasing to be a threat). Either I am better at BnZ evasives than 50% of the arena, which I consider highly unlikely, because most people do the same maneuvers I would in their situation OR people who are playing the energy fighting role lack the requisite gunnery skills to really pull it off with any kind of efficiency and effectiveness. Shots you are forced to take Energy fighting are ones of such high deflection and rates of closure and so out-of-plane, you would never even consider taking them in TnB mode.
So, while I agree with Steve as his statement applies to the upper 1% of the arena population, I do not believe your average person can seemlessly transition from TnB to Energy Fighting and be similiarly successfull. Conversely, if the two styles were hermetically sealed off from one another, there are no guarentees an Energy Fighter would be similiarly successful at theTnB style of low-speed maneuvering. But, the fact is, virtually 100% of those employing energy fighting efficienctly and effectively have long ago learned to TnB with at least moderate efficiency, whereas the opposite is not the case.
Zazen
