I was planning on a "Mig Alley" chapter in my Korean Jet campaigns. I had flown a couple models of the F-86 ingame, seemed like a nice bird. But now I have flown the Mig-15 bis a few times and all I can say is...WOW!

1. Is the Mig-15 way overmodeled/the F-86 undermodeled? Because from my little bit of flying around I think I would run if I was in an F-86 v Mig-15.

2. I haven't spent any time in the Mig at very high altitude, where it was supposed to be better than the F-86. but it is so responsive and fast at low altitude it's scary. I mean it feels like an Su-26 with a rocket engine!

I guess I could do a Commie side Mig Alley min-campaign and call it "Ducks in a Barrel".

Seriously overmodeled Mig-15 is my verdict now. I converted my DeathRace mission to me in a Mig 15bis early vs 5 F-86A5's with ACE AI pilots.

I killed 3, damaged 1 before I ran out of ammo. I landed with a couple of bullet holes.

I suck at air to air combat btw, and that was like my 4th flight in a Mig 15. I did fly most of the time on the deck, and would just zoom UP and pick em off. It was like boom and zoom in reverse.

So much for a Mig Alley Chapter......

Hi, Nixer.
I was going to suggest you get the revised FMs from SAS, but I see you've got there first. For the benefit of others, the latest SAS buttons files have corrected F-86 & MiG-15 FMs, and they should be much more evenly matched.

Hi Nixer,

I'm really looking forward to the release of your campaign, and was curious how you were going to handle or solve the problem of air-to-air missions with AI-flown jets.

Flight model issues aside, it seems like the AI behaviour in the jets is often a "mission killer". It seems like the IL-2 series was optimized for low altitude, realtively low speed, prop-driven combat, and starts to fall apart with the high speed and high altitude the Korean-era jets are capable of.

When I've tried building "Mig Alley" type fighter sweep missions, it seems like the dogfights very quickly turn into into what I call the "Stairway To Heaven" defence: When an AI pilots loses the advantage and goes defensive, he just initiates a climbing spiral, with all the other AI following, sometimes "forever" (until I get bored/frustrated and exit the mission).

I've seen this behavior with prop planes too, but with the jets it is really dramatic because of their greater speed and climb rates.

This is probably something that can't be changed, but I was curious how other mission builders were "tweaking" their missions to reduce the "Stairway to Heaven" effect

Best wishes.

Darn good questions, and I am really just gonna concentrate on ground attack I think. Very little air to air in this one, and what I have that involves jets is low altitude stuff.

I have given up on the Mig Alley chapter idea, for the reasons you have mentioned.

And the Mig 15 ingame is still more like a spaceship than a 2nd generation jet fighter IMO.

Hi again Nixer,

Roger ground-pounding, that sounds like it will be terrific, and I'm anxious to fly it when its ready!

Just as a FYI, I did decide to go back and try changing a few things in an air-to-air Korean mission. These changes seemed to help a little:

1. Used 2-ship flights (instead of 4-ship).
2. All AI set to "Ace".
3. Opposing flights at same altitude.
4. Human pilot turns "OFF" engine overheat.

As far as I can tell, the AI are not constrained by "overheat" (not sure, but it looks this way); they appear to be able run full throttle for prolonged periods when climbing; that may be one of the reasons the Mig15 dominates a human-flown F-86 (for sure not the only reason, but a big one).

When I turned "OFF" overheat, the performance difference was narrowed dramatically, and I could hold my own flying an F-86. My understanding is that historically these two jets were fairly closely matched, so this little "cheat" helps close the current huge performance gap.

Best wishes.

I have been using two ship elements for awhile now also.

The AI definately cheats with "overheat"/afterburner. I use Autopilot to catch up to my flight lead all the time, as he is in AB climbing out for minutes at a time.

I don't understand what you mean by disabling "human" AB/overheat?

Hi Nixer,

Just meant to un-check the Overheat button in the Realism settings when flying jet v jet. I generally fly Full Realism settings, but found I simply could not climb with the AI-flown jets unless I turned off Overheat.

I think this is just a small part of the problem, but it did make enough of a difference for me that I was not getting totally dominated by the Mig-15 any longer. With Overheat enabled, I either got a kill in first moments of the dogfight, or watched the enemy AI extend and climb away while I had to back off the throttle and twiddle my thumbs.

I think the AI will still try to boom n' zoom, and extend by climbing away (which are realistic tactics and just fine), but the problem I was seeing was too big a performance gap, and that was a fun-killer. Turning off overheat might reduce the performance gap enough to make it fun...

I did have a couple fun 10 v 10 (2-ship elements) test dogfights over central Korea, so I think there is some potential to work out "ok". In the tests, the Migs still "won" the fight overall, but I and some of my AI sections got kills.

Best wishes.

Turn off the overheating option!! D'uh! Didn't even think of that. Big difference. Thanks. They still outclimb 'ya, but at least , now, they don't get away because I have to throttle back before I explode.

Like I said they are Alien Space Ships....the amazing part is that if a human is flying them YOU STAY BLACKED OUT almost all the time. Sorry 400 kts and a hard turn = Goodnight


The bad side of mods...................

This brings to mind a question I've always had with the IL2 mods : Is there any sort of 'standard' with regards to flight models ? Back in the day, MS's CFS series had the 1% thing. Anything like that at work here ? Or are the FM's what the respective modders feel like having(if this is the case, it's not a sim anymore, but a mere arcade game)?
I ask because I have seen no documentation anywhere relating to this question, and to be honest, the f-86 vs. Mig-15 thing is a perfect example - the Migs controls need to be very stiff at high speed due to the flight control system, but their not.

Yeah, AI pilots aren't subjected to the same problems that we are, in most sims. They don't black out, they control their planes so expertly that thay never overheat or flameout, and they see through clouds. If you have your settings on full real, you are at a severe disadvantage.

Seeing through clouds was being addressed with the v4.10 patch by Team Daidalos, unless they have dropped that feature.



Wheels

The other thing that seems to help "level the playing field" a little is give the MiG's 100% fuel and reduce the F86's fuel load to 50% or so (in the full mission builder, you can customize the fuel loads). Most missions will not require a full fuel load; 50% is probably enough (and on short dogfights maybe 25% will work?).

After playing around with jet vs jet combat for awhile I went back and flew some low-to-medium altitude early-war air combat missions (BoB scenarios), and IL-2 still "shines" in these missions. The AI isn't
perfect", but good enough that the missions are fun.

Best wishes.

There is a "AI overheat" mod at SAS, that "may" (not so sure) help.

Otoh my opinion is the late Mig 15 was really superior to Sabres in 1 vs 1, only better WWII veterans on the US side were able to defeat korean rookies by superior tactics, when fighting russian experts it was really a hard time for the outclassed F86s, they were to hope for a draw at best.

As a mission builder, i would make the 86s aces and veterans, Migs rookies and very occasionally veteran.

I know it's not the answer you might be looking for, but have you tried Rowan's Mig Alley? Hadn't played it for years, because I think it became incompatible with more modern nVidia drivers, but I reinstalled it with all the old mods I had some time back and it's working perfectly again, with 6dof TrackIR and all. It's the only dedicated Korea sim, I believe and it's still great. Conventionally speaking, the graphics would be primitive, but to me it still conveys a great sense of speed and altitude and the AI is great. Sorry for going off-topic, but I think some of these older sims were fantastic and maybe we have become too obsessed with surface appearance.

Chuck Yeager, in his autobiography described his impression of flying a MiG-15. He thought they were badly designed and outright dangerous, and said his own experience made him go pale.

The Saber, on the other hand, is quite a nice aircraft.

You can figure out how this match-up ought to stack up from there. There's a reason we were so successful in the skies over Korea.

Cheers!

Rick...