i thought the spitfire only had one deployment setting, not the several cited in this report.
I was referring to the split flap design. Several other planes in AH have them as well and may be more similar to the report you are referring to (Baumer's proposal to test the Brewster flaps is a good idea).
HiTech isn't the kind of person that constantly thinks he is right and not willing to listen to anyone. I remember in version 2.07 when the P38's flaps were causing excessive issues. People from the community provided data supporting how a real P38 with full flaps extended would perform and what their tests resulted in in Aces High. Hitech took a look at them and fixed them to accurately represent real P38 performance.
I couldn't find any of the technical threads I remember reading, but here is a thread from that time frame:
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,175185.50.htmlFollowed by the fix:
http://www2.hitechcreations.com/frindex.htmlWhat you have in your head and what happens in Aces High is not that far off, I am slowly starting to see. In aces high when you deploy full flaps, you lose airspeed. When you have little airspeed, you have less energy or "E." The less E you have the more susceptible to planes with higher levels of E.
So if you are flying a 190a8, it is not advisable to deploy your flaps. 190s were designed for speed, although early 190s were more agile than later 190s, they were also slower. If you were to drop your split flaps in a 190, you will turn slightly better. But because they were not designed for maneuvering, they will hurt you because you will lose E and your turn radius will not increase enough to turn inside a P38 using fowler flaps. However, now that you have deployed your flaps, your airspeed is low and you are vulnerable to the P38 or another aircraft (say a P51) coming in at a higher airspeed.
I will try to use my flaps and out maneuver spitfires and zeros in a P38. I will never turn tighter than them, so I will try to use my assumable better knowledge of ACM against them. More often than not I underestimate their abilities and find that zero coming around on my 6, so I have to use my airplane's better dive rate and top speed to regain E and rethink my strategy. Most of my kills against zeros I end up using E instead of flaps.
The 109K4 is an example of a german plane that benefits from using flaps. It is a beast in the proper hands.