Hello There

[Oakenhawk]

Hi all,

Seems I'm sufficiently pissed at the AI to start exploring IL-2 multiplayer. Dadnar has quite the recruiting presence on Reddit, so I thought I'd come on over and register.

I'm having a hoot flying around in this game, and have several careers active. Right now, my favourite is flying Tempests out of Volkel in Bodenplatte 1944, but I've been known to dabble with the FW-190 A3 over the skies of Stalingrad.

I'm a bit terrified of Multiplayer in this game for a variety of reasons, the largest being my physical set-up here. My machine is OK, but I don't have head tracking. My Stick is a battered Logitech 3D that's served its purpose but due for retirement (or at least dedication to the antics of my 4 year old copilot). In a game where situational awareness is everything thumbing my head around with the stick is not an ideal solution.

It's not to say I'm not willing to give it a shot, but... yeah, I'm almost certainly going to suck and it's going to be a combination of skill and hardware.

That said, I think I'm able to handle the basics fairly effectively, takeoff, landing, etc. Taxiing is a pain and I need more practice but it's something that can easily be done. When my Logitech 3D cooperates I'm usually good for 3-5 Tempest Kills on FW-190 A8's per mission (albeit against horrific AI). Ground Attack needs some work, largely as it relates to matrix-dodging AA (Flakvierling OP, pls nerf). Auch, Ich mochte mein deutsch verbessert. Es Ist nicht so gut.

Time commitments present another issue. I'm not sure how many Sunday afternoons I can allocate to this with family commitments such as they are (UTC -5:00).

So that's me, for now. Perhaps you'll notice me on Teamspeak soon, who knows.

-Oak

[KingBob]

Hi,
You will definitely need to start playing in multiplayer before you jump into FTC. You can fly without head tracking, but obviously it is harder. Just start hanging out in the Finnish Virtual Pilots discord and/or fly on Combat Box with SRS. Flying in multiplayer is a totally different game than killing AI in the campaign and it will take maybe 100 hours to not just get totally owned. Just spend a few months in multiplayer and learn the game.

[Dadnar]

Dadnar has quite the recruiting presence on Reddit, so I thought I'd come on over and register.

I will admit that I am a bit shameless at times

I think what KingBob was trying to say is you are likely not ready to jump right into our campaign and fly with us at this moment. We do however, have a group of people who are happy to fly with you to assess your skill level and help you train in the areas that will get you comfortable flying in our campaign.

What is more important is whether you think you can commit to Sundays at 19:00 UTC. We ask for a 50% minimum attendance and require you communicate absences as soon as possible. Our schedule is typically 6 Sundays of missions followed by a 2 week break, so the minimum attendance is roughly 3 Sundays out of 8. If you think you can do this, then we can work out all the other stuff.

Dadnar

[KingBob]

I would say that this game has the highest learning curve of any game I have played before. There is so much to know. Hell, real pilots in the war took months to train and hundreds of hours of flight time to learn to fly a fighter. I think it would really help to watch some or all of his tutorial videos to get some of the theory down and then just fly with some people. It is extremely hard to learn the game by yourself. https://www.youtube.com/@RequiemsACTL/playlists

[Oakenhawk]

Nice flying with you gentlemen on Thursday evening, I thank you for your patience! Particularly Karrt, Bayern & KingBob.

My short list of stuff to work on includes but is certainly not limited to:
1) sorting out keybinds for mission critical components like Engine Management. That fiasco with the P-51 on the ground was something else. As it turns out I had the Prop RPM down to the minimum, so with the throttle at 100% it wouldn't do anything. I guess I turned it down accidentally when I was trying to increase the fuel mix or something.
2) farting around with my head tracking - MP is probably not the time or place to be breaking it in, but I wasn't burnt by it I don't think. Minor tweaks from here on out.
3) Navigation - Being found, then lost, then found again over the skies of Holland was a mission in and of itself for me. I miss the mini-map crutch I have playing single player. Time to do better there.
4) Situational Awareness - Towards the end of the session I kind of started tuning my eye a bit better to finding things. They're tough to pick out! And then as I would scan, I'd lose eyes on flight lead, resulting in some interesting maneuvers to try to regain contact there.

Given everything that happened I'm pretty pleased I was able to plant some rounds on that ME-410(?) that we found before he just... disappeared.

All in all I had a great time learning the basics and again, thanks for everyone who was patient with me as I took my first steps here in MP. I learned a lot and am hoping to keep learning and improving.

[Rostic]

So nice to read your feedback, Oakenhawk.

All you experienced during single evening reminded me all occasions happened in RL with all VVS RKKA pilots together those memories I read
At late 41-42 VVS RKKA pilots were trained mostly just takeoff/land in desperate attempt to make up for losses in squadronsl, so they were not trained very well.

[Dadnar]

My short list of stuff to work on includes but is certainly not limited to:
1) sorting out keybinds for mission critical components like Engine Management. That fiasco with the P-51 on the ground was something else. As it turns out I had the Prop RPM down to the minimum, so with the throttle at 100% it wouldn't do anything. I guess I turned it down accidentally when I was trying to increase the fuel mix or something.
2) farting around with my head tracking - MP is probably not the time or place to be breaking it in, but I wasn't burnt by it I don't think. Minor tweaks from here on out.
3) Navigation - Being found, then lost, then found again over the skies of Holland was a mission in and of itself for me. I miss the mini-map crutch I have playing single player. Time to do better there.
4) Situational Awareness - Towards the end of the session I kind of started tuning my eye a bit better to finding things. They're tough to pick out! And then as I would scan, I'd lose eyes on flight lead, resulting in some interesting maneuvers to try to regain contact there.

You're not alone and from what I hear, you did fine and are well on your way. Honestly, I still have trouble with a few of your points, especially #4. Keep at it dude!

Dadnar

[KingBob]

You were actually pretty good with flying in formation. Spotting is a skill and it requires a lot of practice. You are flying around with zero zoom right? It makes it far easier to spot things at long range. You def should spend a few minutes figuring out all the keybindings you will need. You can now make different keybinding profiles so you can tailor them for each plane if you want. It will be tough for you with the minimalist setup you have.

The biggest thing will be just putting time into flying and a bit into watching videos on theory and just random dogfighting videos.

[Oakenhawk]

A bit of an AAR from Thursday's session, taking my short list above in order:

1) sorting out keybinds for mission critical components like Engine Management.
- Only flying in the P-51 is really helping with the familiarity for now. Prop speed, throttle, engine mix, all becoming fairly quick on the keybinds now. I don't think I cooked my engine once yesterday. Awesomesauce.

That said, I realized throughout the last two weeks I didn't realize my canopy was left open FOR THE ENTIRETY OF BOTH SESSIONS. I fixed that, half way through last nights session and glory be, I can now keep up with people. GO FIGURE

2) farting around with my head tracking
- Getting much better with using this in general. Last week it wasn't sensitive enough, and i still have some tweaking to do but it's almost there.

3) Navigation
- The "O" key is your friend. Not something I knew about last week (again, I was too busy lamenting the lack of a mini-map to realize the map briefing had its own hotkey! MAGIC! I don't think I got lost once and was able to navigate freely throughout our session over Krasnodar and Novo in FINNISH. I think this made my experience 150% better this week!

4) Situational Awareness
- Remains a work in progress. I think improving the Navigation immensely has resulted in me now knowing where to look for contacts. Looking DOWN and identifying contacts amongst the farms remains challenging. I found it was a LOT easier to identify targets from a low altitude looking up. Perhaps I'm a born night-fighter? LOL

The other challenge is maintaining eyes on contacts through a situation with rapidly changing AoA. I often lose visual through a merge and can't maneuver adequately as a result, and puts me immediately on the back-foot. Something to work on.

That said, in situations where I have an advantage, I've been able to do some real damage. I scored my first kills (or shared kills) last night, largely pouncing on people who were either unaware or otherwise already evasive from Karrt, Ken, Gator, or both.

You are flying around with zero zoom right? It makes it far easier to spot things at long range.

Yep, although I adjust the zoom as-necessary, particularly when I'm trying to keep in formation and need to keep a corner of my eye on Karrt's wingtip or something. I assume "Zero Zoom" means the not wide-angle fish-eyed one where we 'zoom out' as far as possible. I definitely don't ZOOM IN, or narrow the field of view, very often, unless I'm scanning for a called contact. That's when you'll hear me say "How are you guys seeing all this crap?!" lol...

Good times last night, and thanks again for flying with me!

[Dadnar]

All good progress Oak!

Sounds like you are pretty much ready to jump in campaign as soon as your schedule allows.

Dadnar