Films of Lazer duel - tips wanted.

[TweetyBird]

Here are two fights I had with Lazer as part of the dueling ladder.
There were three, but there's nothing worth posting in the last fight, he shot,  I died, period.

But in these first two, I think I've gained a pretty significant entergy advantage. I'm higher, I'm faster, and he has no  immediate guns solution, so I should have the advantage, right?
Well through a series of newbie errors, I blow it. I know the errors are many, but in the spit, I think its very obvious the major problem is I don't know what to do with the advantage.

Any tips about what I should have been trying to do would be appreciated.

http://bellsouthpwp.net/s/h/shawnlau/etchvslaserp38.ahf
http://bellsouthpwp.net/s/h/shawnlau/etchvslaserspit5.ahf

[lasersailor184]

I'm no expert, but on the first one, you hung up there way too long.  By the time you came around he was pulling up after going nose over.  Had you gone the moment his nose went over he would have been toast.


Also, just my opinion, but you relied way too heavily on the vertical game.  While you had the advantage, lazer didn't let you have the shot.

You also relied way too heavily on easy E fighting.  Sometimes you just have to pull hard to get in a good shot.

Practice leading shots too.  Whenever you had the chance to down him, you missed an easy shot.

[TweetyBird]

Thanks for the tips. In the spit, during all that time above him, I was thinking maybe I should chop the throttle till I had a good closing speed, but not so much. I think its better to be behind with a llittle speed advantage than behind with a great speed advantage. I mean it seems the slower the closure, the longer you have to set up your shot and the more drastic the evasive would have to be. But there lies my dilemma. Most of the times I was sitting there with no plan. Another thing I was thinking of is a way to drive the fight lower. Again, I don't know, but it seems an e advantage would become more important the closer you are to the ground. I mean the ground does take away some options.

So I guess I'm looking for overall plans in a situation like this. Like here I am 2k above this plane and have the e advantage. Now whats the next step to actualize this advantage? How do I go about converting it to an angles advantage?

[RTR]

Hiya Etch, here's my .02 cents worth.

The P38 fight and the spit fight had almost the exact layout.

In both you had the advantage throughout most of the fight.

Lets use the Spit duel  as a template here.

All in all I thought it was generally well flown on your part.
You had the advantage most of the time. What I did notice however was this:

You seemed to have some indecision a few times in which way to turn (or should I go vertical). At one point in the fight Lazer passed in front of you and was heading low to your right aft side.
You  initially started to roll left, then change your mind and rolled right.  This equals lost time and blows a minute amount of E.
Every time you move a flight control it comes at a cost to you.
So when you move them..mean it.  (I would probably have gone vertical here BTW)

SA needs a little work. I noticed a few times you were scanning around trying to re-aquire him, not sure exactly where he was.

Try going off line occasionally and fly around the drones. Do loops, barrel rolls, immelmans etc around one of them and keep it in view. (I have been flying sims ..AW and here.. for 5 years now, and I still practice this). Practice practice practice. Knowing where he is/will be, will save your butt on a regular basis.

You lost both fights Etch, because you gave up control. You allowed lazer to bring you down to his altitude, bleed your E and enter into a knife fight.

I noticed in the text bar Lazer saying  "Yawn"    "this isn't even a duel".  I laughed when I read that. He is trying to goad you into flying his fight  (he wants a knife fight in a phone booth).
Fly YOUR Fight. Make HIM fly YOUR fight.

Drive the fight lower?  Not when I have a clear altitude and E advantage. Make him come up to you, if he wants a knife fight.
When he gets there he will be lower on E than you. When I have a clear altitude advantage, I want the fight to climb.

You were in a perfect position to keep the fight as an angles fight Etch. You ended up in a knife fight. Don't let your opponent dictate the terms of the fight. You dictate them.

As for the P38...pretty much the same.  Have a surf through the bbs though and look for Ack-Acks tips etc on the 38.  Just a quick note from me though. I didn't see any use of flaps there, and combat trim was on.

Good fights though Etch, all in all.

Hope some of this makes sense to you and helps a bit.

Cheers,
RTR

[Nomak]

Hey Etch, if you are gonna be up tonight we can go to the DA and ill show ya how to beat up on that Lazer fellow

[Torvald]

I'll go to the duel arena with you, I wanna perfect my Fw 190 fighting skills, and I would consider it an honor to learn from you.

PS

My ingame handle is DmdTorv

[TweetyBird]

Thanks for the tips and suggestions, RTR. Before the duel, I looked up his stats just to see what plane type he would probably choose, so I'd have the views set. Unfortunately, I didn't map the flaps to my stick. In MA, I never use them in a spit, but in duels, I guess even in a spit they would be important(?) I've also unchecked the auto combat trim in the flight box and mapped an easy 1 key toggle to it on the keyboard.

I'm taking your advice about practicing the views offline as, you are right, I lose the target a lot. Along with doing barrel rolls etc arround the drones, I'm  trying to intentionaly put them in certain views and keep them there, just to get in the practice of controlling the plane from different views, as I think that is also one of my weak points.

On your advice about indecision. I can't help but to think of that line in the the movie "The Karate Kid" where Pat Morita tells him "Walk left side or road, ok. Walk right side of road, ok. Walk in middle, squashed like bug."

It is a problem. I guess I just have to go with it right or wrong and not change in the middle of the maneuver.

Thanks for taking the time to watch them, and the help. Its much appreciated.

[TweetyBird]

I'll take you up on that, Nomak. Thanks!

[Urchin]

Originally posted by TweetyBird
Thanks for the tips. In the spit, during all that time above him, I was thinking maybe I should chop the throttle till I had a good closing speed, but not so much. I think its better to be behind with a llittle speed advantage than behind with a great speed advantage. I mean it seems the slower the closure, the longer you have to set up your shot and the more drastic the evasive would have to be. But there lies my dilemma. Most of the times I was sitting there with no plan. Another thing I was thinking of is a way to drive the fight lower. Again, I don't know, but it seems an e advantage would become more important the closer you are to the ground. I mean the ground does take away some options.

So I guess I'm looking for overall plans in a situation like this. Like here I am 2k above this plane and have the e advantage. Now whats the next step to actualize this advantage? How do I go about converting it to an angles advantage?

OK, I didn't watch the films but I'll try to answer your questions.  When you are above your opponent and you have a speed advantage, you DO have a significant advantage.  However, unless he rolls over and dies, you still have to win the fight.  

A good pilot isn't going to just let you dive down and kill him.  He'll try to set it up so that when you dive down, you overshoot, then position himself so he gets a shot when you climb back up.  

So you have two options.  First, dive down, but chop throttle as you dive, then follow him through his evasive and kill him.  This works on opponents that are good, but not great.  If they are great, they'll adjust to you chopping throttle and you'll overshoot anyway, except without the margin of speed you need to get back up to safety.  

So your second option is to dive, take a shot, then go vertical again and try to tempt them into roping themselves.  This works on everybody.  However, you are at a fairly significant risk of getting your tail shot off if they've been practicing.  What I usually do is dive in, then spiral back up.  This makes it somewhat more difficult for them to shoot you on the way back up, and it also makes it slightly easier for you to come back down after they stall.  Always know how fast you are going.  For instance, if you are climbing and are at 100 mph, and they aren't gaining very fast- they are about to stall out.  If they are 500 yards away, now is the time to come back down, NOT after they've stalled.  You want to hit them WHILE they are flopping around in a stall, not after they've recovered and have some speed to play with.  Also, you want to chop throttle here to, because if you don't you will overshoot, and if you miss the shot and overshoot in this situation odds are good you won't have the energy cushion you need to outzoom them safely a second time.

[TweetyBird]

>>For instance, if you are climbing and are at 100 mph, and they aren't gaining very fast- they are about to stall out. If they are 500 yards away, now is the time to come back down, NOT after they've stalled. You want to hit them WHILE they are flopping around in a stall, not after they've recovered and have some speed to play with.<<

Thanks for the tip. I don't know where I got it from ( maybe when AW was 1/2 time) but I had been waiting till I saw signs of them stalling *before* making a move. As you've pointed out, this is much too late. This is exactly what I was looking for. An idea of how to formulate a middle game (?) strategy.

Another thing I'm interested in testing is  (given an e advantage) following them through their evasives, but at a higher altitude (perhaps 250 or 300 above them). Droping the nose is always a threat, but it saves some e as a cushion. I think this is where gunnery starts affecting ACM. I always have to look for a cushion because my gunnery is so bad. Whether the gunnery is bad because my ACM is poor or my ACM is poor because my gunnery is poor is the $64 question. I've had some people tell me to chop throttle on the initial merge to get arround quicker. I guess if my gunnery was good, this might be a risk worth taken. But in my case, there is a high probability I'm going to miss, so chopping the throttle is just giving e away.

I don't know if I'm looking for a magic bullet, but it seems given the same plane setup, the plane with the most e should be able to force a win in a duel. In chess, the strategy is pretty clear. Given enough material advantage, you swap down to the endgame where the win can be almost mathematicaly forced. Of course mistakes can be made, but that is the the overall strategy. I guess I'm looking for the same thing in duel, a way to simplify the fight to a point where the e advantage is looming large. If there is a way to simplify the fight, then chopping throttle on the initial merge would have to be considered a very risky gambit.

[TweetyBird]

>>Drive the fight lower? Not when I have a clear altitude and E advantage. Make him come up to you, if he wants a knife fight.
When he gets there he will be lower on E than you. When I have a clear altitude advantage, I want the fight to climb. <<

The idea of driving the fight lower was attemping to find a way to force the win given an e advantage.

If you have two planes, same type and setup, the same speed, and plane "B" is 2000 feet over plane "A",  "B" has the e advantage. How much of an advantage that is seems to be relative to how close the ground is. If plane "A" is 15k feet above the ground (with plane B 2k over him) , it would seem he is at less of a disadvantage than if
he 200 feet above above the ground (with plane B 2k over him).
At 15k, plane A can always get maneuvering speed and do "fancy pilot stuff.". At 200 feet, it seems using the vertical would get very difficult for the plane with the entergy disadvantage. It seems the way to force a win from an e advantage ( in a 1 vs 1 dueling situation) would be to get the fight down to the deck while keeping the e advantage.

I dunno, I might be missing something so thats why I'm throwing this out there.

[humble]

For some reason i'm getting a film viewer error (at work) so I'll have to look at clips later...

As a general comment you need to decide if your fighting an angles or energy fight...the angles fighter goes for immediate pressure at the expense of his E state...since these are duels I'm assuming a co-e merge here...that being said the only possibility is lazer went angles hard and you went long on the initial merge...what transpires is a "semi-rope" with the angles con tail chasing you with a ~ 1.8-2.1 (usually) alt disadvantage.

The key element here usually will be how the "E player" tries to convert an E advantage to an angular gain...normally the higher plane goes over the top...the "angle player" has kept vertical manuvering speed and pulls up into the reverse with some lateral seperation forcing a potential rolling scissors...if he doesnt get the shot he still has his angles and usually has nibbled away at the E players advantage...2 or three of these and the e player gets sucked into an angular disadvantage without the E to extend.

The real secret for the E player is to force the angles player to the vertical without sacrificing E state  or forcing an evasive break without crossing below the alt of the angles player...best option is to climb to just over stall (I'd say 120 or so in spit V and then start a flat circle (2-3 G)...since your in the same plane judging relative E state is pretty simple...the angles player wont know exactly what your doing for the 1st few seconds...you should see him close pretty suddenly as he tips his "hidden E" hand going nose up...convert your 180 "flat turn" into a spiral climb...he'll nose down to avoid stall soon if he's good...now flatten back out...dont get to high over con...if he stays flat roll in on him from 45 degrees off his 6...think of it as a vulching run...you cant go under target...your looking for that 400-500 20mm snapshot...then up and out on the 8 to 2 or 4 to 10 track and roll back in on opposite track...kind of like a series of oblique vertical figure 8's with con at nexus.

With out seeing the film I'd bet you got drawn into some nose down guns solutions and laser converted them to a track solution on you. Any good angles guy will fight the "under" spot all day long with no problem 1 vs 1.

[DoctorYO]

Great posts from all....

You asked what can you do when your in a superior e state..  Well for starters shadow the con directly over him...  Make a lax pass at him to see what he does.. Zoom back up to your perch.. repeat once or twice.. (the con now thinks boom and zoom whilest your really thinking kill the fugger....)

Now do the same exact lax pass; if he pulls the same or similiar manauever then chop throttle and anticipate his turn. Utilize roll to match his turn and control your e state to match his while comming straight down on his head.. Use of rudder is recommended to manage angle of attack and speed along with throttle of course..

he only has one option..  Nose up to you with a rolling scissors..  Anything else youll be on his six close in at equal e states... Most likely with a gun solution.... (if he nosed up and things look bad extend...  after going nose up he will have no energy to run you down..  Rinse and repeat or possibly re-merge if your e state has eroded..)

Sucker them into one style of fighting while looking for mistakes on his part in another style.. then capitalize on them..

Thats where these other postings are really important...   Knowing how to do it and applying what your know are two different animals..  Practice is key as the others have posted wisely...


2 cents..


DoctorYo

[humble]

Tweety...

YO's saying what I was trying to convey perfectly...the "stomp on his head" theory of E fighting:D

I happened to film this today...not quite right but it may give you a feel for what I mean by flying "the under"...I'm in an F6 with a co alt/Pos E yak climbing up my oscar...anyway he never really establishes a good working plan of attack...2 or 3 rounds of me fling under and inside him...I tickle him once I think but miss both decent shot windows and he goes away (empty clip I'd guess)...pretty ugly flying on both parts really. One thing I do pretty decently is "manage his shot window"...he's always shooting "nose down" or front quarter snaps...without seeing his side it's hard to tell if he had a ny decent looks and missed or not...

http://www.azhacker.com/images/film61.ahf

[Lazer]

Nomak, I think you would have difficulty beating me yourself, so try that before you try and teach someone else.  I think you would have rude awakening, sweetheart.