Two part question. I’ve not played allies as much as the others - just wondered what planes people are using for BR1/2. I’ve always taken 2 plane squads over a tank squad for Russia and Germany as I like several of their planes and do well, but I can’t seem to settle on anything for allies.
P38 seems like the obvious answer, but I prefer bombs to rockets.
P40 I thought was going to be the answer, but it seems much harder to control than other planes and I end up all over the place.
P51 is OK, but the bombs don’t seem to do anything compared to most.
Hurricane I quite liked, but it just doesn’t seem to compete in the air and when diving at a certain point it pulls itself up and refuses to let me to continue a dive - but the 12 machine guns are a lot of fun.
Second part - and this may also help explain some of my issues in the first part, although hasn’t been an issue with Russian or German planes - can anyone explain what the pilot perks actually do in practice? I’ve often wondered but never been quite sure what difference they each make.
P38, which imo is totally UBER for BR I and II, is the obvious choice, and something of a guilty pleasure for me to use. The P51 is also realy out of place for what is supposed to be early war match up’s, but I have not really used it to much since the great merge.
You want the detection range one and the increased view one, the later is especially helpful for you gunners
The G tolerance one is also good for obvious reasons
P-38 is top killer nr 1. Only good pilots in fighters (IAR, Bf109, Zero, etc) can take you out. 20mm cannon + MGs rips planes apart and also light armoured vehicles/tanks. M8 rockets also good.
SBD-3 is a must have for bombing. The 1000lb bomb is amazing. Tanks will blow up even if you miss the target by half a mile.
P-40 is a manouvrable fighter with mini bomb. Indeed hard to control. Even after max upgrade is goes all over the place.
Hurricane is good, manouvrable, many MGs and since recently even a nice bomb, but watch out, this plane flies slow. Very slow. Too slow for pacific, ammo points are too far
Spitfire is great, especially the version with only 20mm cannon. But not very fast, not many cannon rounds and no bombs or rockets. So I almost never use it.
The F-2 and FP-3 I have never used. But have decent speed and 2 small bombs.
P-51C-10 is ok, fast and 2 bombs, but poor visibilty from the cockpit compared to the P-51D-5. Unfortunately this plane is from the 73 squadron which also has the P-38G-1 and Hurricane. So you can only use 1 of those 3 in your selection.
Nobody uses the Seagull unless they have no other plane unlocked. You will die quickly.
Perks
You need the enemy detection perks, anti blackout perks, extra flight stamina + regeneration.
Love how fast the spitfire turns! And cannons seem to take out Japanese tanks, but yeah ammo is an issue!
Fortunately I seem to have to P38 squads with different coloured P38s - must be a legacy squad. Maybe I just need to practice more with rockets.
Those are the perks I tend to take, just not sure the actual effects they have. Does detection give you the reticle sooner? Does it effect rear gunners? Blackout seems self explanatory, guessing that’s the overload effect perks? But stamina - is that just resistance to and faster recovery from blackout or is there anything else to it?
No, hurricane has a max TAS of around 500, hence why it automatically pulls up.
About perks:
“Power of control loss after the blackout”: it adds extra sensitivity to your pilot when you blackout, so you can control the plane better.
“+50% enemy aircraft detection range”: This perk increases the maximum detection range at which the target lead indicator appears and the maximum range at which the triangle above planes appear. The base value soldiers have for this is 1000m and 1500m respectively.
It’s the Keen Vision perk from WT.
“+30% angle of focused and peripheral vision” : Unlike the other perk, which lets you detect enemies in front of you, this lets you detect enemies around you in a sphere around the plane. Unsurprisingly, the base distance for this is half the above values.
So this perk increases the maximum angles that you can see enemies from, the base values of these angles are 15 degrees for the focused angle, and the peripheral angle is 60 degrees.
It’s the Awareness perk from WT.
It’s pretty much the resistance of pilots to g forces, so more stamina = more time before you black out,
Only things that affect AI is the detection range perk and the angle of focused/peripheral vision.
I also have those.
P-38G-1 (73 sqdr) is the green one.
P-38G (marine attack sqdr 231) has the steel color with stripes, I like to use this one best because it looks cooler in this color.
The planes are the same except for the colors.
But there is a bug, it’s an attacker plane as shown but the game sees it as a fighter.
This messes up my line up with other attackers/fighters.
So I currently dont use the steel color one sadly but the green one.
And because the green one’s squadron also has the P51C-10 and the hurricane, I cant use those either.
Necropost but detection range is better
The extra vision angle benefit is too small to justify and proper situational awareness also nullifies the benefit most of the time
pls stop