Hello everyone, a new player's first report here to everybody's satisfaction
I'm not very good at telling stories, hope this one is not too boring.
A little of background... Bought my first joystick when I started to play battlefield 1942, and the image I have that made me want to fly a plane in that game was of a spitfire diving on a player's tank dropping a bomb right in the ceiling, a huge blast and the plane disappeared to the sky again, I just tought that was surreal, like it came out of a war movie and so I wanted to do the same , and so I did, I bought a Microsoft Sidewinder and started flying in the game, went to a level where I could drop one bomb right in those pesky tanks and blast them to pieces. This was a game a not a sim, but it was very fun none the less.
Fast forward to a few years back and I don't remember how, but I got to know il2 1946, bought it and went for a spin, I wanted to do some dog fights like the old times. What a surprise, this was much harder than battlefield 1942, and so I went on a journey to learn the game and most of it's intricacies, some good hours spent trying to do missions, dogfighting was a mess, I would always end up with an enemy in my tail, no matter what I did. So I started to read on dogfights and aerial battles and energy, even printed one manual that i downloaded somewhere with lots of info about combat flight sims and read it in my school vacations but it was very (and still is a bit) confusing, but i learned the basics of flying and reading/using instruments. I used to fly mostly bf109s because I liked the boom and zoom style, even tough I would always get up caught. It was a bit frustrating not getting the grasps of what Energy was and how to dogfight, I would try to manoeuvre very slowly to not waste my energy, but that didn't get me any kills. Next up i built a freetrack hat with a one point tracking, and i was much happier i could move my head and translate it to in-game, awesome, but a bit confusing at first and not the smoothest, my laptop screen was not very big so it was difficult to look behind and keep the eyes on the screen. This was when I tried hypperlobby and went online a couple of times, only to get clubbed down and frustrated. So I decided that I would try a sim again when I bought a Occulus rift or something that would allow me to move my head freely.
Tried War Thunder but didn't get used to it, i liked the mouse and keyboard movement as it was easy to control a plane a look around, but in the harder modes i couldn't use them and in the arcade mode planes made movements that I deemed shouldn't be possible from my perspective and previous experiences with il2, even tried harder modes with joystick but the looking around was still very hard, and again i postponed my sim flying to when i had an Occulus rift or something.
Jump to a few weeks back and I recently bought a new pc, a desktop that can I can use to play all my games without problems (my laptop was overheating), and one of my first instalments was il2 1946 to try with max settings and what not, got my old sidewinder (1, no ff) and flew a bit in quick missions. Then started to look for TrackIR and head tracking solutions, TrackIR was still a bit expensive for me, then i found EDTracker, no camera needed and no light problems, decided to get the PRO version, it arrived last week or so and my impression was.. OMG this thing is GREAT, little config and so smooth and responsive, I was in love . Immediately jumped to the last version on il2 1946 and loved it.
Ok time to buy the next il2 because now my desktop can run it! Clod came out near the time that i last played il2 and so i decided to give it a try. Got the game for 10€ and downloaded all the Team Fusion patches.
Wow! Such nice graphics and interfaces and lots of new stuff to get acquainted. Did the RAF campaign to get the grasp of how to fly again, full realism except for the plane icons, loved the little bit of character development and finished the campaign.
By this time I was already reading the ATAG forums and learning/searching for info about flying, and waiting to get 'good' to try online again. Then i read a post about a guy going online and captivating people to not waste too much time on single player and give multiplayer a try, and so I did, but first i couldn't resist to do one or two mission full realism just to have an idea of how to spot planes and to my surprise it wasn't as hard as i thought it would be, not easy neither lol.
So there i went to the TeamSpeak server, just got in and said 'hi', most of the players greeted back and continued to chat about enemy positions or enemies in someone's tail.
Decided to fly RAF as it was what i was used to from the campaign. On my first sortie i was shot down while looking in the manuals for the 'correct' or 'good' rpm for the spit, never saw what hit me(maybe my engine just exploded when i wasn't looking, but i don't think so) and i was able to get back to land. Even though i was shot down so quickly, some 5-7 mins in to the flight, i enjoyed being able to get that plane back to the ground and that reminded me to keep my eyes open and check the engine info in the wiki for my current plane prior to takeoff. On the second sortie i decided to remain over land, climb to around 10k and go from there, so i spent some 10-15 min climbing and then cruising around looking for enemies or something to appear on my sight. At a moment there was a fight going down below near an airfiled and i decided to circle it and try to figure out who is who and if any of ours if having trouble and needed help, I try not to rush too much because i always end up in an enemy's sight, so there i was circling and checked my six only to see a 109 coming in my direction, holy shit i thought, i'm done for, let him get close and them use my turn rate to avoid the shots, and so i did, and manage to avoid his first pass, then we both got around and now it seemed we were stuck in head on attacks, all this time i had someone on TS helping me telling me where he was and when to 'brake', I was still watching him and trying to out maneuver him and for a moment i had the upper hand, at least the guy on TS told so, that he wasted his advantage, but then i collided in a head on pass, my wing went to shreds and i had to bail, but i wasn't even mad, i was happy that i could identify the threat in time and respond accordingly, the thing is my adrenaline levels just EXPLODED, my heart was beating so loud when i was strafing and trying to get the upper hand that i even noticed it mid-fight, i can only imagine the adrenaline levels on real pilots fighting their way out/in, it was AWESOME! I loved it, and loved the fact that my pacience and acceptance of defeat/looking at my flaws seems to be way higher now.
I'm not good at keeping the damn plane stable, flying in formation, knowing when to throttle down in a dive to keep maximum speed, trimming my elevator effectively, keeping the enemy off my tail, how much the radiator needs to be open/closed, judging the enemy's energy, judging my own energy, but i can take-off, land and fly a plane, and all the rest is coming slowly, but coming... and i guess everyone had to get through this phase, the books can't teach me all, I NEED to fly and be in the situations i read about to finally understand them and how this whole thing works.
I have made more sorties and enjoyed them, and enjoying them i think is a crucial aspect for me to be motivated, i got shot down without ever seeing my enemy, i got chased to the ground even after my engine was broken and my pilot was wounded, i forgot to open my radiator blowing up my engine on the take-off at least three times,i got shot and a friendly helped me to get the enemy off my tail, i got over zealous and got an engine broken by an enemy bomber gunner (but i got him down too) and i got a couple of shots on enemy planes (not sure if they went down or not), tried to help friendlies and landed many times with problems on my plane.
My mistake as a beginner was thinking it was going to be easy to get (at least) some planes down, i was wrong and got frustrated when i saw i wasn't capable, so i changed my objective to be a bit more "realistic" and it is to take-off, try to fulfill the objective or help friendlies in completing the objective/getting out of tight situations, even if i can only scare them off, i feel like i'm helping, and then return to base and land, not just thinking my plane is a waste bin that i just discard when not fully working, now i always try to get back home as safe as possible.
I got the game last week, this was just the first week, looking forward to new sky adventures with everyone!
PS: a bit of a long and probably messy post, sorry.
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