Air combat maneuvers vector roll plus#

It should give the broad 'feel' and 'decisions' of air combat, but stay simple. In addition, unless you play a 1 v1 duel between two aircraft, the game will have an issue with micromanagement say you control 4, 6 or as dozen planes - you are a flight or squadron leader and as such should not be micromanaging the exact throttle and stick inputs of every jet, even if it was feasible. But I don't think I went far enough.Īt the core, the issue is air combat is relatively complex, and it is always harder to abstract and simplify than it is to add in extra detail.

I kinda identified an aim to move away from traditional mechanics, such as movement templates, pre-plotting, special movement rulers or cards etc in favour of simplified movement. I made a manifesto identifying factors like energy management (potential vs kinetic vs position to foe), detection, pilot skill and aircraft performance as key elements. Unlike the Cobra, this isn't a move mostly for airshows-this could be useful in actual combat.I've generally been discontented with aerial wargames generally decrying excessive complexity, slow play, recording, and old fashioned mechanics.

Essentially the Herbst Maneuver allows a pilot to turn on a dime while coming back around at an extremely high angle of attack-and therefore with a huge amount of potential energy and speed to spend. Or for a look at the trick from a distance, check out this F-22 Raptor pulling it off (among some other things): It can be a little hard to get a feel for exactly what's going on by watching NASA's footage of the move being pulled in the experimental X-31 plane, so here's a diagram:

Instead of just pulling up and going forward again, the Herbst Maneuver has the pilot roll the plane a bit while its nose is pointed at the sky, so that when the nose comes back down, the plane is pointed in a different direction. That being the case, it's mostly for airshows and hard to imagine it being useful in actual combat.įirst performed by German test pilot Karl-Heinz Lang in 1993, the Herbst Maneuver is basically Pugachev's Cobra with a bit of a twist. Theoretically, the rapid loss of speed could be used to make a high-speed pursuer overshoot you, but it also leaves the jet that pulled the Cobra in a pretty vulnerable state. It's an impressive but questionably useful trick. But either way, the engines are firing hard enough the entire time to maintain the jet's altitude despite the loss of speed and lift. If the plane does have thrust vectoring, that can help the re-orientation even more. In a plane without thrust vectoring but with a thrust-to-weight ratio higher than 1, the drag towards the tail of the plane can be used to pitch the nose forward again. And these nutso stunts are basically the aptitude test.įirst performed by Soviet test pilot Viktor Pugachoyov in 1989, the maneuver that would go on to be called 'Pugachev's Cobra' is one of the building blocks that makes up many other more complicated supermaneuvers.ĭuring flight, the pilot pulls back to an absurd angle of attack, taking the nose of the craft completely vertical or even beyond. There are no strict or explicit criteria for whether a jet is supermaneuverable or not, but there's a loose list of the (mostly-Russian) jets that can live up to the name.

Air combat maneuvers vector roll plus#

This gives pilots control of a plane even after it's stalled, and really opens up the possibility of maneuvers where you stall on purpose.Īll that plus high maneuverability by traditional means adds up to a whole other kind of a precise aerial control. Specifically, if that ratio is greater than one-the plane's thrust can completely counteract the its weight and then some-pilots can power through sticky situations by just flooring it. Thrust-to-weight ratio plays a part as well. It looks like this:īut that alone isn't enough. Instead of relying on airflow, jets with thrust-vectoring can twist and turn themselves around by changing the direction their jets are pointed. This is accomplished in a couple of ways. Pilots can pull off moves with precise control in conditions that would leave other aircraft hopelessly plummeting towards the ground. The quality that sets some jets apart from the rest is called supermaneuverability: they are so powerful and nimble that they can fly without relying purely on aerodynamics.

But some jets are powerful enough that they can leave all that in the dust. But even during the most intense in-air aerobatics, most planes are still slaves to aerodynamics: The air flowing over their wings gives them the lift to stay aloft and they control their movement by altering the surfaces that air flows over. Loops and barrel rolls are impressive aerial stunts, sure.