What seems to happen in these games is what has already been described further up. ^ The game flight model perhaps has flaws which people learn to exploit. In WB, 190s used to be able to dive to cherrypick, and reach speeds well above what would have been VNE for that plane, without structural damage. Another dubious quirk was planes doing very hard turns with the greatest of ease - a scenario which failed to take account of how much force the pilot would have been needed to apply to the stick to make those turns, and the G forces he would have to endure as a result. In RL, a pilot would get very tired very quickly doing the stuff that goes on in these games.
Three other very grey areas in AH1 were the helicopter defence move, the ability to keep full control of the plane while blacked out (and maintain a hard turn) and the 800yd spray shots. These were completely changed for AH2 in the name of progress, and rightly so. But here as in WB all those years ago, there would be protest at the changes, account cancellations etc. The only reason I can think of was that people had learned to exploit these tricks, and their game fell apart when said tricks were no longer available.
For all these reasons, I never took the FM of these games that seriously. I'm not interested in gamey tricks; I'm interested in how it would have been in RL.
I do remember running into Urchin & Leviathn, soon after AH2 had been deployed. There was a 2v2 going on, and as I got there it became 3v2. Urchin was in a P47 and Levi was in a Spit - I assume it was a V. I bounced Urchin in my F4U, but he evaded at the last second, then realigned and landed pings on me at 600yd+. In AH1, I'd have been dead because (IMO) dispersion wasn't modelled accurately in AH1. But I survived, and one of the others got Urchin. That left Levi, who was just making one of his hard turns to acquire one of my friends. Unfortunately for Levi, that turn gave me a nice planform view of his Spit, and I blasted him. I wouldn't have thought anything of it, but for the fact that my text buffer was awash with white text.
"Your buddy did all the work for you"; "If he hadn't been there, you'd have been dead"; "You screwed up on that 2nd pass"; "If your aunt had had balls, she'd have been your uncle" etc. etc. LOL. For the life of me, I can't remember who the other two guys were. We all went our separate ways after that.
What's that instruction written on fireworks? Light blue touchpaper, and retire immediately! I'd better do just that!
:p
