Your Best Tip on Getting Better

[Muzzy]

Okay, I'm bored, so....post your best tip on how to improve at Aces High. Rules are: you can post only one piece of advice. It can be on how to generally improve, or how to improve flying a single plane, or bombing, dogfighting, GV's, but only one tip.

Mine:

Up your favorite ride and practice basic flight maneuvers while looking out your rear view. Do the same with top, side, back/up, etc. Do rolls, loops, turns, then try more complicated moves like immelman's and barrel rolls. The objective is to get comfortable with controlling the aircraft without looking at the instrument panel and to improve your situational awareness.

[Latrobe]

Kind of simple but the pay off is HUGE. Never EVER give up. Even if you know you are being completely outflown and going to die, stick to the fight until the end. After the fights over look back on it and think where everything went horribly wrong. What mistakes did you make? At what point did your opponent get on your six? How did he do it? How do you go about countering that move next time so you can get onto his six?

Auto-recording your sorties and then looking back at your fights later in the film viewer helps immensely. 

[Triton28]

Auto-recording your sorties and then looking back at your fights later in the film viewer helps immensely. 

This.  Pay attention to what you did right and more attention to what you did wrong.

[-ammo-]

Gunnery - practice practice practice. 

[TequilaChaser]

Train Like You Fly, Fly Like You Train! as Ren would always say.... ( this saying is actually posted on the Map in the Training Arena around the outer edge of the old Trainer's patch )

Best to learn the strengths and weakness of each individual aircraft, ground vehicle, boat, and field artillery...... with out knowing these things one is not capable of knowing which direction to really take the fight...

Learn the flight envelope of the planes, and practice riding the edge of the far ends of that planes particular flight envelope ( stall edge / low speed ---- compression / high speed ), learn to ride the tunnel! ( meaning do not blackout and give up precious time and aircraft control while blacked out )

always train, ( I really like the VF-17 Jolly Rogers approach to their squad Training on Monday Nights ), regardless of how good you might think you are their will always be someone better! even for us old farts who come and go then come back, we still go train/duel/knock our rust off a lil bit!

good thread, Muzzy!


TC

[caldera]

Try to keep your ego in check. 

[bozon]

Kind of simple but the pay off is HUGE. Never EVER give up. Even if you know you are being completely outflown and going to die, stick to the fight until the end. After the fights over look back on it and think where everything went horribly wrong. What mistakes did you make? At what point did your opponent get on your six? How did he do it? How do you go about countering that move next time so you can get onto his six?

This is good. Keep dying till the other guy starts dying more than you do.

My own tip:
Read performance ranking tables (speed, turn etc.), then throw them away - they are irrelevant in most practical cases. A P-47 will out turn a Spit9, a Mosquito will run down a 190D9, you just need to learn how it works.

[Pluto]

One thing that has helped me out alot in fighters is intentionally putting myself into outnumbered situations. It has helped with tracking multiple cons, e management and pretty much all aspects of ACM.

[morfiend]

 Learn to be smooth! it takes lots of practice and a lite touch on the stick but will pay big benefits!

 The guy who really showed me the ropes used to say smooth is fast,fast is good!   Then he would spank me in a cage match just to prove it!

   OH and practice BFM and learn to understand the energy egg!

   

[Oldman731]

Mine:

Up your favorite ride and practice basic flight maneuvers while looking out your rear view. Do the same with top, side, back/up, etc. Do rolls, loops, turns, then try more complicated moves like immelman's and barrel rolls. The objective is to get comfortable with controlling the aircraft without looking at the instrument panel and to improve your situational awareness.

Agreed.  Most important single skill to master.

- oldman

[DmonSlyr]

1. Timing

2. Understanding how and when to pull the maneuver. That includes flaps and throttle.

3. Understanding the E state.

4. The SA aspect of your position.

5. Understanding of what the enemy plane is capable of.


They all curve how you want to to base your enagement. But they are all aspects you want to observe when you fight againt and fly the planes in AH.

[JunkyII]

Don't be afraid to get knocked around in the DA. Learn more from a loss then a win.

Read the write up about SA in the training area, and apply those in the MA.

Mix the DA fight skills with good SA...your top 20% in the game right there.

[-ammo-]

1. Timing

2. Understanding how and when to pull the maneuver. That includes flaps and throttle.

3. Understanding the E state.

4. The SA aspect of your position.

5. Understanding of what the enemy plane is capable of.


They all curve how you want to to base your enagement. But they are all aspects you want to observe when you fight againt and fly the planes in AH.

I thought we could only give one tip??  What's an enagement?

[DREDIOCK]

Learn that there are more throttle settings then full wep and full reduced

Speed is life. But sometimes its a matter of what speed

[Puma44]

Learn the basics of BFM and energy management from someone who knows the basics.  To get a good solid foundation of skills, it's important to learn the crawl, walk, and run basics of air combat.