A Comprehensive Guide to Air Realistic Battles in War Thunder: Part 2 - Fighter Combat 102

This game still isn't worth learning to be good at.

Mistakes I made in this video:
- I should have probably spent less time talking about possible ways to play theoretical matchups and more talking about the underlying principles of "turn vs things you turn better than, dive vs things you dive better than" etc etc.
- Game 1 had a super annoying video player UI, I'll use only VLC to go over recordings in the future despite it's occasional jank
- General messiness and subjective nature, good players will find many MANY things to disagree with here and that's perfectly valid
- My aim in many of these engagements is complete garbage
- Honestly the more I make of this stuff the more I realize how nuanced and hard to explain air RB is and any attempt I make feels very incomplete.

Hopefully it can be useful to some anyway. And thanks for the input on video 1, Sylvester.

0:00 Welcome back to Hell.
0:20 What do I mean by 102?
2:10 Be capable of basic play
3:14 Basic evasion
7:37 What is Energy?
11:13 A more complete definition of Engagement/Fight
13:27 Two (new) Rules for all fights
14:03 Rule #1: Stay aware
16:08 Rule #2: Keep enough energy
18:27 "Energy Fighting"
20:35 Two main types of fights
20:56 Dogfight
21:51 Asymmetrical / Boom & Zoom
23:48 Which type of fight will happen?
24:10 Possible starts to a fight: Relative Energy
25:45 Possible starts to a fight: Plane Types
28:58 9 "Fight Types" when we fly a given aircraft
31:05 DISCLAIMER
32:16 Advantage vs. Turnfighter
34:38 Neutral vs. Turnfighter
37:18 Disadvantage vs. Turnfighter
42:23 Advantage vs. All-Rounder
44:20 Neutral vs. All-Rounder
45:57 Disadvantage vs. All-Rounder
48:07 Advantage vs. BnZ
49:04 Neutral vs. BnZ
49:52 Disadvantage vs. BnZ
52:48 Who gets to decide if the fight happens?
57:08 Playing against unfamiliar planes
1:00:34 Playing against superior planes
1:03:39 Bomber hunting
1:04:42 Remember to reset after fights
1:05:18 What are the concepts?
1:07:41 Video example introduction
1:08:17 Game 1: Bf 109 F-4/trop (All-Rounder?)
1:25:12 Game 2: P-47N-15 (Boom & Zoom)
1:47:05 Fatal error
1:49:55 Summary + Homework

[conehed]

This should have way more views, this is the best guide for air RB imo. Thanks. I know this must have taken you a long time, I appreciate it, it helped me a ton

[sawit]

Very complete, thank you very much !!

[integr]

When I hear "energy fighting", I'm thinking in terms of attempting to reduce your opponent to a drained energy state in order to win. This means energy retention and generation matters and this informs the tactics. I.e. if you have a good engine, you should try to drag the fight upwards for instance as this will drain energy, but if your output is higher they will stall first which can lead to easy kills. For instance, the harrier can't turn nor is it the fastest, but it sure can climb. So it benefits, if in equal energy state to the opponent, from dragging the fight up.