I'm seriously struggling with both Germany (tier 5) and Japan (tier 4) at the moment. Everyone and their mother outturns the German planes and I need like a minute or so of uninterrupted shooting to kill anything with the Japanese planes, and anyone who gives them a nasty look shoots them down.
German planes are not made for dogfighting. Learn boom-n-zoom/energy fighting tactics. You should have the Bf109 E-3 by this point, that's an excellent plane to use those tactics in, although the He 112 and MC 202 are not dissimilar. Fly like a hawk, circling overhead until you spot a juicy target, then dive in swift and hard for the kill before zooming back up to your perch to hunt again. Even the Stuka flies best like that, diving in for a bomb run, then using that momentum to gain several thousand feet afterwards while you reload.
Japanese planes....yeah, spitball guns is a problem. The Ki-45 ko has less of this problem but it's more unwieldy. Your best bet with JP low-tier fighters is to sucker enemies (especially Germans and Americans) into dogfighting you, where your better manueverability will give you an edge. Try to get them turning inside so that their cockpits are exposed to fire -- pilot knockout kills are your best bet.
Do you have to finish a battle to get XP? I always seem to not last long enough to survive to the conclusion of the battle >_< Just right now I did my strafing runs too low twice in a row and got eliminated...
No, and if you leave early you'll get the rewards but you won't have the breakdown of what they were. Should be able to find some record of it in your messages. I always tend to stick around a battle if it's near-done anyways, just checking things out in Spectator mode.
IL-2s are op awesome.
Discuss.
Yes, yes they are. Although I still think the most OP for its tier is a fully upgraded I-16 Ishak. Quad MOAR DAKKA MGs + 8 rockets, and a climb rate over 5000 ft/min. Insane for a tier 2.
The IL-2M is a bit better since you have that tailgunner. It suffers as you get higher though. Enemy fighters are just too fast and two well armed. My Soviet ground attack craft of choice now are the Pe-2 variants. They don't have the frontal firepower of an IL-2 but they have a respectable bombload, excellent speed and better overall mobility, imho.