Historically the P38 had an excellent combat record and was one of the most heavily armed fighters over Europe during its time in early WW2. It is the only aircraft to ever score a kill while in an unpowered glide (pilot detached external fuel tanks when enemy was spotted but forgot to switch to internal tanks before the enemy entered range). Yet the P38 in game is little more than a guaranteed free kill for the other team, it is slower, has lower HP, turns wider, and has fewer weapons than any other heavy fighter in the tier with comparable upgrades installed. It gets out turned by Beaufighters with full loads of rockets and all base upgrades. In a head on fight (chicken) it will ALWAYS lose to the P40 which is the plane you unlock the P38 with and is a normal fighter. That is how tinfoil this supposedly "heavy" fighter is.
It either needs serious buffs or to be knocked down a tier, because there are tier 4s which heavily outgun it as it is, even reducing the XP cost of upgrades would be effective because other tier 5 planes have upgrades for much lower XP costs in spite of being much easier to get XP for.
Every time I use it I end up getting out turned by literally every plane in the game including bomb loaded attack planes above 1000 meters, its been 2 hit killed by tier 3 fighters, and when i tested it against the Russian multirole fighter with exactly 100 hit points flying straight behind it 200m away it took over 30 seconds to kill it. I have played 30 games with it and never gotten more than an assist because literally everything can out turn it, out gun it (as in damage actually dealt because as far as I can tell the listed firepower is a worthless number, and the cannon it has overheats in 3 seconds or less and takes 10 seconds to cool), and outlast it (30 games has only gotten me 3000 xp total so I cant get any better than base anything.)
Edited by Ouroborus15, 28 January 2017 - 10:02 PM.