mig kill help please!

I came back to DCS after half a year away and tried both stable and OB and found, to my delight and surprise, that in OB there were really significant improvements to the wretched, persistent stutter issue that had put me off half a year ago. Now it's mostly smooth, depending on the terrain and a/c. Great work there, whatever was done. Very much appreciated.

So I started again on 'Hunters over the Yalu', flying the Sabre, but now smooth enough to see what's happening, and I now have a query for anyone who knows about the Sabre in DCS and the Mig15 opponent you properly encounter at 'historical' combat altitude in around mission 7.

First, is it right that the Sabre feels really, really, really sluggish at around 30kft plus, at speeds of around mach .8 ? V hard to control precisely. Or am I doing something wrong?

Second, is the AI Mig15 FM realistic? They seem to have no sluggishness issues, and an incredible zoom and roll capability, whatever the alt and speed?

Hence, finding it hard, at altitude, to track and kill one.

All normal?

Cheers

It is normal that planes handle worse at 30k ft than at SL.

No, AI FM is not really realistic. Especially on other difficulty settings, the difference really shows.

Just drag them down low, then you can easily beat them.

Air is a lot thinner at 30k feet, you have to fly somewhat more gently in a sense. The AI use a simpler model that sometimes causes unrealisitic behavior, MiG-15 seems to be one of the more egregious offenders. This is a performance concession (for your CPU). They're still beatable, but we're all waiting for some incoming AI improvements (written about in today's newsletter). Sounds like may drop soon.

Make sure you order your flight to attack using the built in comms, as well as the rest of the formation using the f10 radio menu. Otherwise they’ll just follow you passively. If you do this they’ll keep the Migs busy, and it will be much easier to score kills.

OK. Thanks. Will keep trying. It's a great campaign - my difficulties nothing to do with that. I've set up 1 on 1 fights in the editor at altitude and notice that at high alt, at high speed the planes - both mig and sabre - are v diff to control precisely. I'm a novice, of course, so....

OK. Thanks. Will keep trying. It's a great campaign - my difficulties nothing to do with that. I've set up 1 on 1 fights in the editor at altitude and notice that at high alt, at high speed the planes - both mig and sabre - are v diff to control precisely. I'm a novice, of course, so....

1v1 is much harder in the Sabre than 30 v 30, where the AI is distracted. The MIG climbed better and had more power, add to that the UFO FM of the AI and it's a real challenge. - to counter it, I set almost all of them to Novice, so they behave more credibly. You may encounter a few honchos here and there, though. Watch out for Casey Jones, the one with the red-nose MIG!

If you are starting at 30K ft. make them follow you down. Get them to commit at transonic speeds, like over 350. Pop your speed brakes and pull out. Watch them continue down and auger in with their thick wings an non flying stabs. Keep your speed up unless you can whittle down their numbers and spread them out. If you can keep a good range on them their canons won't hit you as easily. Practice fighting in the vertical. See if you can loop with them and score hits near the top of a loop and then on the diving side. Close but don't overshoot. When you follow them in the vertical roll out early and hammer head, yoyo turn to cut the loop short so you don't stall out. Again close in a dive. there are a couple .lua hacks you can do to help practice but you can't use them online. Increase your muzzle velocity in the shell_table.lua under weapons to about 880m/s and in the MiG-15bis.lua reduce their g limit to about 4 to 6 gs and max bank angle to 75-80 degrees. This will limit their g tolerance and make it more realistic compared to the Sabre with g suit. Let me know if you need help with the files. Others can help here too.