So one day i got a Gabreski Medal.
To my surprise this also meant that i got a Vampire.
So i try this thing out to see what all the fuss is for.
And I have learned nothing except that i am doing it wrong.
Spoiler
This is surely not helped by the fact that i dont fly spits (stopped at the bristol) except for the occasional foray in some kind of premium british fighter.
(i have enough premium british fighters to play in teir 3 up to tier 8 at this point. Acme just keeps sending them in the mail ...)
I have spent the past year or so Boom&Zooming my way up the BF line instead. And it shows.
My average point totals at the end of vampire matches started around sub 5k and after a day or three the average is approaching 8k.
So I do what i always do when i know nothing.
TO THE FORUMS!
... and there is nothing.
Nothing! about the Vampire other than it getting briefly mentioned in other topics. Usually about how great it is.
So can any seasoned Vampire pilots out there share their insights into the Vampire.
What makes this plane so great? And Why that is the case? (dont be afraid to answer with a detailed wall of text. Just hide it in a spoiler.)
Don't forget the How To when it comes to things like:
Tactics
Build Options
Dirty Tricks
Preferred Pilot Skills
Tactics
I thank you in advance for taking the time out of your day to respond.
Fair warning. My success rate at speculative guesswork is on par with my WinRate. Hit or Miss.
I start on the right track and then sometimes make a weird left turn and get lost in the weeds ...
Specialist Planes earned: Japan, USA,UK, Germany, USSR, Europe Light Fighters: Ar 68/80, Bf 109 B/E/E-3/F/G, Fw 159, He 51/100 D-1/112, Ho 229, Me 209 A/ v4/ P.1092, Spit.V DB605, Ta 152 Ki-5/8/10/27/43-1,A4N/5M, Hurricane Ia, Bristol 146,Spitfire Vb IM,DH.100 F1, I-17, Yak-1, MiG-3 P-23/36/36C/39N-1/40, XP-31/36F/55, Hawk 75M, Model 81A-1, , P-51A, XF15C,
MultiRole Fighters: Type 91, P-12/26/35/43, XP-44, P-47B,F11C-2, F4F/U-1, Typhoon, Ar 65, Fw 190 A-1/5/D, BV P.210, I-5/15/16(e)(l)
Heavy Fighters: P-38 F/J, XP-58, P-82 B, Beaufighter/ V, Ao 192, Fw 57, Bf 110 B/C-6/E, Me 410, Bf 109 Z, Do 335 A-1, Me 262,Tu-1,SE 100,
Attack Aircraft:BSh-2, Hs 123/129 A, Ha 137, Fw 189 C, Ju 87 G, Me 265, Me 1099 B-2 Bombers:Do 17 Z, He 111 H2,Pe-2, Do 217 M
Build Options: There's only one real build: Gunsight, Polish, LWF, LPU, UE
Dirty Tricks: Altitude is a suggestion and you can easily fly and fight in the yellow, almost to your red band so don't be afraid to chase people up there.
Preferred Pilot Skills: Aerodynamics Expert. You can then either choose Marksman I & II or Engine Guru I & II
Tactics:Its straightforward - watch your boost, memorize which planes you need to BnZ (very few) and just hunt down and kill the rest. Treat it like a much more maneuverable Meteor with the maneuverability of a 109.
Basically this plane has no real weaknesses apart from its optimum altitude but even then, as I mentioned, it doesn't really worry too much about it until you're deep into the yellow zone. It also has only 6 seconds of boost, but on the flip side its boost is extremely powerful so it can accelerate like a bat out of hell so you can actually BnZ in it quite easily given how fast it is already. Its stall speed is low and it has excellent energy characteristics - it loses *just* the right amount of speed to turn extremely tightly, yet maintains it well enough that you don't really have to worry about stalling in hard maneuvers. Its controls are powerful and responsive and its quad 20s are accurate and have excellent range and DPS.
Really, there is very little this plane cannot do. If you want to play vertical like a 109, the Vampire can do that. You want to turn in the horizontal like a Zero, the Vampire can do that too. All you need to do is focus on your situational awareness and the plane will do the rest.
You have a low 10.x second (with equipment/pilot skills I have 9.5s) 'energy' turn fighter (doesn't get too slow when turning) with sufficient sprint to get out of trouble/transit quickly and 4* 20mm close-grouped in the nose to knock down anything quickly.
Plus its a T8 Premium with free cammo, nose art & emblem -> you get lots of Silver & can swap in your best Pilot from whatever (edit: other UK) plane to help maximise performance -> Silver earning.
I do find it has got quite brittle with Ultimate Equipment though, prone to engine/pilot crits & fire.
I kinda want to drop back down to a fully maxed out Advanced setup or maybe switch the Polished Skin for Reinforced Airframe to chonk it up a bit?
Build Options: There's only one real build: Gunsight, Polish, LWF, LPU, UE
Dirty Tricks: Altitude is a suggestion and you can easily fly and fight in the yellow, almost to your red band so don't be afraid to chase people up there.
Preferred Pilot Skills: Aerodynamics Expert. You can then either choose Marksman I & II or Engine Guru I & II
Tactics:Its straightforward - watch your boost, memorize which planes you need to BnZ (very few) and just hunt down and kill the rest. Treat it like a much more maneuverable Meteor with the maneuverability of a 109.
Basically this plane has no real weaknesses apart from its optimum altitude but even then, as I mentioned, it doesn't really worry too much about it until you're deep into the yellow zone. It also has only 6 seconds of boost, but on the flip side its boost is extremely powerful so it can accelerate like a bat out of hell so you can actually BnZ in it quite easily given how fast it is already. Its stall speed is low and it has excellent energy characteristics - it loses *just* the right amount of speed to turn extremely tightly, yet maintains it well enough that you don't really have to worry about stalling in hard maneuvers. Its controls are powerful and responsive and its quad 20s are accurate and have excellent range and DPS.
Really, there is very little this plane cannot do. If you want to play vertical like a 109, the Vampire can do that. You want to turn in the horizontal like a Zero, the Vampire can do that too. All you need to do is focus on your situational awareness and the plane will do the rest.
Nice video, I've been working towards my Vampire slowly but surely. I should have started the Vampire missions before the XP55. Anyhow, I'm curious about some of the decisions you made there. Given you're a far better player than I am, I'm curious as to what you saw in a few situations. The first one was pretty early in the video. You had the enemy Tempest flown by a player, and a P51K bot. I thought for certain you were about to eat the Tempest whom I'd have picked as the larger threat, but you pulled off him and went for the bot P51K. Why was the P51K the better target there?
After the P51K died, it looked like you had a great opportunity to chunk down a bomber (I think it was a human, and a specialist) at what appeared to be fairly close range, and at a favorable angle. You chose to leave him to the heavy fighter bots. I tend to not not trust bots as far as I can throw them, so the fact that you didn't even make a pass on him was shocking to me. I get that bombers can do some damage with their defensive fire, but I figured a quick squirt with the cannons would be relatively safe.
The last thing was when you flew over to that base after passing by the bomber. The Tempest was there again, and it looked like you were going to bounce him...then it looked like you weren't. It looked like you wanted to go after a bot and leave the Tempest, then decided against it and just kill the Tempest. Were you waffling on him as a target, and if so why? When you were heading in my frist thought was, "Tempest is toast" followed by "wth, is he avoiding red players?" followed by "Tempest down, what just happened there".
Please don't take this as criticizing your play, I realize you're a far better player than I am, so I am curious as to what you saw that I did not.
Nice video, I've been working towards my Vampire slowly but surely. I should have started the Vampire missions before the XP55. Anyhow, I'm curious about some of the decisions you made there. Given you're a far better player than I am, I'm curious as to what you saw in a few situations. The first one was pretty early in the video. You had the enemy Tempest flown by a player, and a P51K bot. I thought for certain you were about to eat the Tempest whom I'd have picked as the larger threat, but you pulled off him and went for the bot P51K. Why was the P51K the better target there?
After the P51K died, it looked like you had a great opportunity to chunk down a bomber (I think it was a human, and a specialist) at what appeared to be fairly close range, and at a favorable angle. You chose to leave him to the heavy fighter bots. I tend to not not trust bots as far as I can throw them, so the fact that you didn't even make a pass on him was shocking to me. I get that bombers can do some damage with their defensive fire, but I figured a quick squirt with the cannons would be relatively safe.
The last thing was when you flew over to that base after passing by the bomber. The Tempest was there again, and it looked like you were going to bounce him...then it looked like you weren't. It looked like you wanted to go after a bot and leave the Tempest, then decided against it and just kill the Tempest. Were you waffling on him as a target, and if so why? When you were heading in my frist thought was, "Tempest is toast" followed by "wth, is he avoiding red players?" followed by "Tempest down, what just happened there".
Please don't take this as criticizing your play, I realize you're a far better player than I am, so I am curious as to what you saw that I did not.
OK, so to get the embarrassing part out of the way first: I have a mental checklist of human pilots to prioritise and none of the humans in the match checked them (one of them is on my "actually worse than a tier 1 bot: ignore with prejudice" list)
Now with that out of the way, a clarification: I'm assuming you meant me picking the intact Me209A over the damaged Tempest rather than the P-51K? That was because I felt the 209A was a bigger threat. The Tempest is armed with quad 20mm Hispanos with a range of about 720m. The 209A has an MK103 with a range of almost 1km. And it's the faster plane with a higher optimum ceiling. Bottom line: I can run from the Tempest, I can't run from the 209A, so kill the 209A and if the Tempest turns on me, I can just drag the fight to an altitude where he cannot compete if I'm still fighting the 209A, or I can just straighten out and run away if I don't like the odds.
The P-51K in most encounters was just a case of "he is/was flying STRAIGHT AT ME on the minimap", therefore, he is likely a hunter-bot who has me set as a target. The fact that it remained at altitude over me also made it a threat I didn't want to ignore.
Ignoring the Bomber was a calculated risk. I've flown the B-32 and I know it will take him two passes to flip the Fortress. He had two Heavy bots on him the second time, he was flying straight into the wall of heavy AA from the Fortress anyway so my gamble was that he would either be killed before he could do much or, given the lumbering speed of the B-32, I could flip BOTH center and north Garrison before he could flip our Fortress. Taking fire from him at that point felt like pointlessly wasting time and risking damage or death over more productive endeavours.
The waffle against the Tempest a second time was me calculating whether I could flip the North cap faster by taking out the wounded ADA rather than just killing the Tempest. Flipping the North cap was a priority after all since the teams scores were still close enough that a mass cap flip would've been disasterous. So I waffled about until the Tempest killed the ADA and turned on one of the other blue bots. That made the Tempest priority because he was both closer and actively threatening the cap: if he had killed that bot, the cap might have flipped and the wounded red bot was further away than he was so there was every chance that he would finish off both my friendly bot and the ADA in front of him before I could put down the crippled Red bot so killing him was the priority.
Edited by SpiritFoxMY, 08 October 2019 - 05:12 AM.
Nothing embarrassing about ranking out humans to ignore. Some are definitely better than others; so I see your point there. I'm generally over-aggressive (why I don't like energy fighters and heavies much) and am /not/ good at picking my fights. I lock into hunter mode myself on someone that I think is a threat and try to eliminate them. I die a lot to bots that I'll fly past trying to get to the "threat". I'm not bright enough to learn. Actually, I am, I am too stupid to listen to the voice that says "don't do it" and try to weave through the traffic. Those are always embarrassing deaths.
Interesting thoughts on the 209 vs tempest though. That makes a lot of sense. I'd have probably gone into hunter mode on you if I was the tempest, and gotten eaten just like you described. An interesting thought on the bomber. I had noticed he had the two heavies on him, but I hadn't considered the flack, and didn't know it would take him two passes to flip.
The waffle on the Tempest the second time makes a lot of sense in that context. I didnt pay attention to the cap status while watching the video. I waffle like that from time to time in that situation, but usually I think only when it's a bot vs an ADA. When it's a human, I'll usually punch him out first. While some humans are generally low threats (sadly I have names in mind, and I am really not good enough to be looking down my nose at anybody), they're also unpredictable. For the most part, the bots never surprise me. Humans, I never know what to expect from them. I wish I had the confidence to just accept "no threat" and continue on with the bot killing or to pick my fights more tactically.
Well in this case, I had the benefit of having flown with and against all three of those pilots on the enemy team as well as the luxury of being in a plane that had all the advantages. I could ignore Bubba because I knew I could easily outrun and outclimb him and even out turn him if I was desperate. Added to that he was lower than me, and had already shown that he was not going to break away from his target if he wasn't actively being attacked (he didn't turn on me as soon as I engaged the 209A), I judged that the risk was low enough to ignore him in the initial attack. It had little to do with confidence in my own skill vs his (Bubba is a pretty formidable dogfighter) and a lot more to do with the position I was in relative to him at that point. I held the cards thus I had the luxury of choosing whether or not to engage. If he had been higher and actively hunting, the calculation would have shifted dramatically.
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