DMax said:
I've come to fear the Dora and would like to fly it awhile to learn it's strenghts and weaknesses.
You do well to Fear the Dora, young one. It is the true Weapon of the Dark Side. If you use it correctly, you're invincible.
The Dora has the following strengths:
- It is THE fastest non-perked prop plane in the game, except for the bug that allows the Yak-9U to ignore compression and greatly exceed its historical redline speeds and Gs. But otherwise, you can run down or out-run every other non-perked planes at most alts, even down to the deck, although the speed difference with some like lamer7s and 109g10s is very small.
- It has good firepower with 2x13mm and 2x20mm, all of which are essentially on the centerline, although all suffer reduced ROF from being synchronized. Still, with German electric priming, that decrease isn't as bad as for other nationalities.
- It has very good E-keeping qualities in the vertical, in that it can zoom higher than most planes from the same starting speed, and it accelerates VERY quickly in a dive to get that speed right back.
- It has the usual quick FW roll rate.
- It has very good cockpit visibility.
- It has decent range under the 2.0 FBR with a DT. And because it needs the DT, flying the Dora keeps you from needlessly dying in jabo attacks. Leave that for the kamikaze dweebs :).
- It's very durable. It can usually take a few cannonballs and keep on going with nothing showing in CTRL-D. It can also survive collisions. You can, for instance, run a wingtip into most other planes and come off missing just an aileron, whereas the other plane might lose a wing.
- It's got that whole Dark Side mystique going.
- If you're immune to its harmful effects, you can pipe the methanol boost into your oxygen mask to wet your throat as you fly. Methanol immunity is gradually acquired over many hops, and goes some way to fix your nitrous jones that you got in the A8 model
.
Weaknesses:
- The Dora doesn't hold E well in hard flat turns, as if any Dora pilot's gong to do that anyway.
- I can't think of any others.
So, to fly the Dora, you get a lot of alt, then a lot of speed, and you stay fast. Always fight with an initial E advantage. You use the vertical, doing a rapid series of aggressive high yoyos and lag rolls, never giving the nme time to catch his breath, to bleed the target into wallowing helplessness while you maintain enough speed to be safe from most other nmes in the typical fight. You kill the nme, you extend with your speed, you grab some alt back, and you return to the furball. Then you RTB when out of fuel. Odds are, you won't take any damage except from acks and HOs. You should never get shot in the back except, perhaps, by another Dora, provided you don't get stupid.
I use DT's to alt to the fight and drop back to 1/2 of fuel. My MG's and cannons are both set to d375. How'm I doing so far?
Not well. Always take full tanks. The ONLY reason to ever go with less fuel is to turn harder in a stallfight, which is NOT what you do in the Dora. OTOH, the heavier you are, the quicker you accelerate in a dive, and the more momentum you have in a zoom, which is making the Dora's strengths even better. Also, you need all that fuel to be able to fly the 1.5 - 2 sectors needed to grab 20k on ingress, to grab some alt between engagements during the furball, and for the trip home. Besides, you might want to chase, or be chased by, a 109g10 or lamer7. This will be a LONG chase, and you can always run them out of gas, which is a lot of fun :).
Also, your convergence needs work. You need to set the 20mm at about 200 yards and the MGs at about 300. This gives them all good concentration at the only effective ranges in the games, which are between 100 and 300 yards. Try never to shoot from beyond 200 yards except in 0-deflection chase, and NEVER shoot head-on except at buffs. But in any case, you can usually get 1-pass kills at these ranges with these convergence settings, even if only about 1/2 a second of fire hits the target. You get enough hits close enough together to do fatal damage. I usually run out of fuel LONG before I run outta ammo, but that's because I'm very careful picking my shots.
Once engaged I B&Z and use the nifty roll rate to conserve E. Having faught them, I know they have an incredible verticle zoom climb rate which seems to sustain itself forever. I just tried it myself and roped a number of Spits up. Trouble is, I couldn't pull the nose back around and down fast enought to get a firing solution.
BnZ is a total waste of time. All it gets you is HOs. What you need to do is fairly tight high yoyos to stay inside the nme's turn and keep your passes close enough together in time that the nme can't catch his breath between them. 2 or 3 of these and the nme is bled so much he can't go vertical at all and can barely turn, so you'll have an excellent butt-shot at him as you scream by.
Ropes are fun to do but the problem with them is that they require the nme to be very stupid. They rely on his Greed. Any pilot worth his salt will see the trap and not follow you up enough to get in trouble. This is why you need to use the nme's Fear instead. Cut your zooms off lower and tighter, pulling over with a higher speed instead of waiting until you nearly stall. Not only does this make your next pass happen sooner, it keeps you inside the nme's turn so you build angles and keep the pressure on, so the nme is forced to bleed a lot or die right then.
Any tips on that? What I was doing was this: at about 150 ias, I'd pulled a half roll over while dropping a notch of flaps, and kicking about 1/2 rudder to get my tail up; noce down. By the time I pointed down the bad guy is pointed at me. What's the trick here?
Supose you spot a lower nme so you swoop at him. First you have to do the swoop correctly. Dive steeply down to his alt or a bit below while still a long way from him horizontally, then approach him more or less co-alt on the level, perhaps in a slight climb. This keeps you from diving below the nme, which is about the worst mistake you can make. Give the nme just enough horizontal separation on the approach to avoid getting HO'd, then start your vertical move while you're still several hundred yards out, like about the time you'd shoot if you were a HOdweeb. Hope the nme fires, because that proves he's an idiot and you'll easily get into his rear hemi because he's bound to overshoot you :).
Your vertical move is a form of high yoyo that might end up becoming a lag roll. It'll end up looking like a loop that's twisted in several places. Basically, as you start up, you roll, pull, roll, pull, etc., as needed to keep yourself heading into the nme's rear hemi, while going up high enough to be sure he can't follow you even with bullets. Then you come back down, NOT when you have a certain speed, but when you're in the correct position relative to the nme to be coming in from his rear hemi.
As you start to close in towards firing range, the nme will turn hard into you. At this point, you DO NOT continue in for a shot, because that will be a bad snapshot and will force you to overshoot his turn. Instead, go back up and do the same sort of thing again, only it's easier this time because you're starting behind the nme already instead of in front of him. You do this 2nd vertical move from at least 400 yards out. The closer you are to the nme, the harder it is to stay in his rear hemi. You should expect this sequence of events, and not even THINK about pulling the trigger until the next pass at the earliest, if then.
OK, now you're coming in again on the nme's rear hemi, probably with somewhat better angles. This time, the nme's pretty well bled down and totally defensive, having realized your E superiority by now. So odds are, he'll go straight as you close in trying to rebuild his speed, and then make a hard break at the last second just before you're in range. You should expect this to happen and already be starting 1 last yoyo. And this time, the nme'll be too bled down to even do this, and you'll have him dead. 1 touch of the trigger and he dies. Then you extend away from the other nmes and grab some alt prior to your next engagement.
