In my quest for better Energy Fighting I've had a friend of mine reporting back to me about her efforts to do the same, starting as a fresh, but wary realistic battle pilot.
Her first problems were getting an aircraft to climb to usable altitudes, whilst I myself have been reaching to the 5,000 meters and up altitudes, she reported to me that being around 3,500 meters was about the average for her climb before engagement.
However, I realised she was quickly unlocking planes and jumping into them without upgrading them, so I've had her work on unlocking the upgrades for just one aircraft. She chose the P38e, the first P38, as she prefers the nose mounted armaments and has only worked on the US air tree so far.
So, this P38e, rather poor in climb and acceleration, with a constant overheating problem. She reports she can WEP to around 2,500 altitude, then has to level off, back off the throttles to bring the heat down out of the red indication.
This limitation, even after unlocking the better engines and other performance modifications left the plane under armed, and so with the ammunition belts unlocked she began to play, striving for altitude and then diving on targets.
Her problem, immediately struck her, as the same as mine... She could dive and attack, but targets were often initially only visible at very low altitude, so she's waste all her potential energy at near ground level dives...
Some targets would be at least set a light and go down, others would be problematic to hit, easily ducking under the guns of the low agility P38.
Whilst other targets seemed to only be hit after they've passed...
Her overall impression, un-inspired by me, is that once she had dived, once she had got into the tangle, trying to help team mates and knocking down targets; she would be immediately jumped by, usually unseen, more manoeuvrable opponents. Whom would be on her tail and tear her to shreds.
Only with the intervention of a team mate - which she assures me has been dramatically infrequent - has she reported escaping to repair or at least make a soft landing somewhere, or even just flying around damaged unable to land, hoping for the end of the match.
This situation, seems rather odd, for historically speaking American aircraft, didn't operate in this manner, this mad clamour for altitude didn't happen, they had a leisurely climb from their bases in England then up over the English Channel, a minimum of 26 miles, but usually more like 40. In the game, and yes I know it's a game, one gets between 10 and 20 kilometres. Very much less than half.
German fighters I've found do climb well in this space given in game, but this perhaps reflects their post 1940 role of mainly being interceptors on the Western Wall, prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union, I'm not sure, but certainly this cat and mouse, dive to kill then be killed situation is related to the balance of performance at height or manoeuvrability at low level.
I'm not going to say anything about the seeming over performance of any nation versus another, but certainly the tangle of an Energy Fighter, finding itself below a more manoeuvrable opponent simply results in a dead energy fighter.
So far I've not found a case where my 109 can out climb a P47, or P51, I've not found a situation where in a dive I can outrun them (these being the opponents I now mostly face), and don't even get me onto the subject of performance with mid tier Spitfires.
As for Susan, her problem has been disengaging also, she can't turn, she can't out climb, she has only the P38e model... One can say "Use a better plane", but still it should be a better plane than the ones it's pitted against, America had the choice of model and employed the P38 for a reason, but that reason in game is not it's fitness for purpose, it's it just being there.... being part of history.
Realistic, she says, should be more real.
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