To be fair, being able to disengage at will does account for a significant tactical advantage in a more "realistic" perspective where survival does count higher in importance, than whether a fighter plane can gratify the game pilot's ego in the need to knife-fight everything, and then thump their chests about it.
Having a generally higher K/D, does account for something, since whether or not the pilot chooses to "cherry pick" something is generally of no importance to the opponent when it comes to combat, since the only thing important in aerial combat is the results. Whether the other guy picks or not is just no excuse.
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There are always pickers in every planes, and to be honest and frank, I've never really seen the "duelist" type of guys ever fight in their "disadvantaged" corners of the map. You see those guys usually flying in either a generally evenly matched, or an advantageous part of the map, where their own side has got the initiative and local air superiority for the moment. Or, you may see them in an "easy defensive" situation where the enemy attackers are limited and generally lacking in both skill and numbers. In other words, people usually choose to fly where they can survive more easily - which accounts for a lot of why they seem to do well in a generally "inferior" plane in many cases... not to mention those people also flock with each other, usually resulting in a "spike" of pilot skill level for their own side in that area, which also adds to the favorable environment they'd fly in.
If they go so far as to claim they maintain a superior K/D in their plane of choice, all the while knife-fighting against everyplane, truly without concern of where they fight, then simply put, they're lying. If wanting to prove otherwise, come to the Rooks and look up my position, take off from the fields where I choose to fly, and come fly with me for a while against odds and situations which I can really say would be pretty much "unfriendly" in many aspects. For years, I've been observing the "vets" and their tendencies in where they fly, and truthfully saying, it's not very impressive if you really try keep track of just where those "super-ace" type of pilots show up in the MA. Like so many others, the "vets" aren't so different in that they also flock to the path of least resistance and easy kills. They just tend to more fiercely deny it than the average guy.
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But that being said, choosing where to fly is an active part of SA, since taking off from airfields in situations where doing so is more or less foolhardy, isn't exactly something to brag about either. Therefore, where or how the pilots chooses to fight is a free choice for everyone, and thus, it becomes no excuse in determining how really well a plane fares in the MA.
And if the Dora is powerful enough to grant a much higher survivability in accordance to the "cherry picking" style of the pilot, then that's by itself a trait worth praising of - it does exactly what the pilot needs, namely, keeping them alive, and with very admirable results. Unlike the P-38, only one or two planes can run it down when things go hairy and the pilots decides to run. It disengages at will, and allows the pilot to survive. If that's not "superiority", then what is?
I'm a meager pilot, and the chances are, I'm gonna meet a superior pilot whom I'd probably lose to whether I fly a 190 or a P-38 - that is, if I choose to stick to the fight the way they like. However, when things get hairy, the 190 can save my bacon. The P-38 cannot. How's this not "superiority"?
I've seen most of the faces showed up in this thread, usually praising the P-51, for example, when some other, similar type of comparison/discussion forms around an inexperienced pilot who questions if the P-51 is undermodelled, because he can't seem to outfly it against much more nimbler, yet slower fighter planes. Most of these people have answered that the P-51's strength lies in its ability engage or disengage at will, and how that is a superior trait among others. Strangely, for some reason, the same analogy doesn't seem to apply in this thread.
Coincidence? I call it "double standard".
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However, the K/D stats should be taken into more careful consideration in the fact that the differing roles between the Fw190D-9 and the P-38J/L in the MA accounts for a lot. Like all planes, only a handful of people have really "mastered" them, and the rest use the P-38 as more or less of a jabo plane, generally a one-way ride to the enemy base. The lack of ordnance limits the Dora to mostly a pure A2A role, and if we discount the deaths in P-38 caused from a non-A2A duty, then the K/D gap between the P-38 and the Dora would probably be closed in a lot more.
