Situational Awareness
Firing On The Enemy
The Pursuit Curve
Energy Fighting
Turn and Burning
You must be aware of everything around you. This is called situational awareness. Many pilots work together in wings. That means you may be fighting more than one person at once and you have to know what's around you.
Air Warrior uses something called a "hit bubble" which is made up of the wingspan of your plan. When someone is within firing distance (700yds or so) and you are in a big plane such as the P38 you are very vulnerable to be killed if you don't do something. This means if you're running you should probably be doing some barrel rolls or some similar move to make it harder for the enemy to fire within your "hit bubble".
A pursuit curve is aiming your plane at a good angle to get a better shot at your enemy. There are 3 kinds of pursuit curves the lead, lag, and pure. The lead pursuit curve is pointing the nose of your plane just ahead of your enemy to try to get a better shot at him. The lag pursuit curve is pulling on your stick until your nose is right above the flight path of your enemy's plane. The pure pursuit curve is the most basic of the 3. This is just pointing your nose directly at the enemy's tail trying to follow his every move to get a better shot.
The energy fight is basically taking advantage of your aircraft's superior altitude and speed. This could also be called Boom & Zooming or BnZ. This would be to dive on your enemy taking shots on them as you approach then pulling up and gaining altitude again. Then turning around and repeating until your enemy is dead. Make sure your turns are gradual and not hard and fast. If you try and turn too fast you're going to burn up a lot of E.
When TnBing it's a good idea try and keep E relatively up, enough for loops and such. Flaps are your friend also ;-) It's 4:30am and I'm trying to update this...use flaps, rudders, and watch E- 'nuff said.
The break turn is used to evade enemy fire. Follow with a turn in the opposite direction. Initiate a break turn by banking
(Pulling your j-stick back and to one side).
The barrel roll is used both offensively and defensively. Offensively, use the barrel roll if you're overtaking an enemy too quickly. Defensively, use the barrel roll to force your attacker to overshoot and pass you. Initiate a barrel roll by rolling slightly and applying pitch. Keep the nose pitched to spiral around the axis of your flight path.
Scissors occurs when an attacker overshoots, and the target reacts by making a reverse turn too early. Never purposefully enter a scissors fight - it bleeds off speed and altitude. To break a stalemate, roll 180degrees during one of the passes.
The spiral dive is used as a last resort, and only if your aircraft has the superior turn radius. Fall into a steep dive, and then make a hard-G turn. Throttle back midway through the turn and invert. Pull the nose up hard to maneuver onto the enemy's tail.
The high-speed yo-yo is used to reduce angle off tail and bring a target into your firing range. Perform by relaxing a turn, then pulling up into a sharp climb. Invert, and then apply pitch to slide back down onto the threat's tail at a smaller angle off tail.
The rollaway is a variation of the high-speed yo-yo; the rollaway involves rolling away from the target's turn as you invert. By diving and reversing direction with a 180degree turn, you can drop in behind the defender's tail as he ends his break turn.
The low-speed yo-yo is used when you have a good firing angle but need to bring the target in range. This maneuver decreases range at the cost of increasing angle off tail. Execute by diving inside of a target's turn and gaining airspeed. Then, pitch up and slide onto his tail once more.
The immelman is used to increase altitude and reverse direction. Basically to do an immelman you just do a half loop then turn right side up. That's all basically.
The split-s is used to increase airspeed or bleed off altitude. It is basically a diving half loop that is useful when you want to disengage a threat.
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