Sopwith Camel and Spad XIII

[Bullethead 12]

I haven't yet shot down anything in my latest Spad campaign, but I love the speed that French monster!

 

I've recently been giving the Spad a go myself. I don't have any complaints about its maneuverability; it does quite well in the high yo-yo department, so you can get your good firing opportunities. You just have to maintain the E to do that. And you have to recognize it instantly when you can't, and run/dive away before you get in trouble.

 

I also find it hard to kill anybody in the Spad. It's not that I don't get good firing opportunities, it's that I'm a lousy shot. Because I'm just getting the feel of the beast, I'm playing conservatively, so I'm only still in the fight at all if I've got a good E advantage; otherwise I'm outta there. That means that in all my firing opportunities, down at the bottoms of my high yo-yos, I'm coming out of a dive and am overtaking the target rapidly. It's a low-deflection shot, but it's only for a second or so because and E-fighter MUST pull up into its next vertical move BEFORE it overshoots on a firing pass. Otherwise, it blows all the angles it's built up so far. In the limited available time, I can almost always get a burst into the target somewhere, but usually I miss the vitals, so the fight goes on. And the longer the fight goes on, the lower my E unavoidably gets, until eventually I have to make a run for it. But at least the Spad is QUITE good at that .

 

This is where I miss my FW. When you're packing multiple 20mm or 30mm, ALL of the target is the vitals, because nothing flies very well without a wing or a tail . But with WW1 RCMGs, you can only do instantly fatal damage if you hit in a much smaller area. And the E-fighter, at the bottom line, is largely dependent on doing instantly fatal damage. No matter how well you fly, and even if you're never hit by enemy fire, if you can't knock the enemy down on your 3rd pass, you're probably not going to get him, and if you keep trying, either your target or 1 of his buddies will nail you as you bleed down. Thus, the Spad pilot, if he's aware of the relative E states in his fights, is probably going to live a long time. But if he can't get guns on the back of his enemy's head in a split second, he's also probably not likely to run up much of a score. I need to work on that part .

 

One important lesson I've learned for success in the Spad already is NEVER warp except on the way home. It appears that warping has fixed altitudes for you between waypoints, seemingly based on dividing your assigned objective altitude by the number of waypoints between. Thus, even if you climb to your objective altitude of, say, 16k, over home drome, then warp, you'll find yourself back down at 5-10k en route, and will almost always be bounced by Germans who are much higher. And in those fights, the Spad really doesn't have any option but running away. I never found this a problem when flying Pups and Fees, because in those I expect to be bounded and can usually handle it. But it really takes the fun out of flying a Spad. It would be nice if warping would never put you at a lower altitude than you already have, because otherwise I rarely have the amount of real-world time necessary to do my missions.