Nice.... an I-15 can outclimb the Me-262A, uh?

[fbs]

I-153BS, biplane with max speed 276 mph, climbs at 3,097 ft/min

Meanwhile...

Fw 190A-8/R2, speed 379 mph, climbs at 2,110 ft/min
Bf 109E-7, speed 354 mph, climbs at 2,700 ft/min
Spitfire IX, speed 408 mph, climbs at 2,800 ft/min
Me 262A, speed 541 mph, climbs at 2,900 ft/min

Guess there's some unit conversion error with the I-153BS (and some other I-15/I-16 types)?


ps: found an even slower airplane outclimbing the Me 262:

Hs 123A, another biplane, speed 218 mph, climbs at 2,956 ft/min

Perhaps there's some reason why these obsolete and old biplanse are such excellent climbers?

[heliodorus04]

Thermals

[Denniss]

Never really touched the soviet crafts and only some of the climbrates.
You need to factor in a/c weight, engine limits and engine layout.
The I-series were rather lightweight, engine power was OK and available at low to med alts.As biplane they had an incredible amount of lift, they could not climb to extreme alts due to engine altitude limits. This may have resulted in high climb down low with limited max alt of this aircraft.

Fw 190 A-8/R2 is a heavily armored a/c (like Fw 190F) and climbs less than the A-model. Fw 190A was not a good climber if compared to the Bf 109.

[Gabriel B.]

they climb and turn very well , at low altitude, because of the large lift area (2 wings ) .
they would be excelent ww1 dogfighters, but in ww2 , high speed slashing atacks became the norm.

[fbs]

I'm still skeptical...

I-153BS.. loaded weight 1,900 kg... power 775 hp... power/ratio = 407 hp/ton
Spitfire IX... loaded weight 3,350 kg... power 1,720 hp... power/ratio = 513 hp/ton

So the Spitfire has more speed, power, power/weight ratio, maneuverability and everything else you can think of compared to the I-153... I find it very, very hard to believe that an obsolete biplane can just climb up and escape all these other fighters...

The reason is that if they actually could climb faster, then the pilots would just climb up, dive down to attack, then climb up again and so forth, and that way keep the initiative, while all accounts I read about Germany in Russia is that the Germans were the ones that could keep climbing up and diving down on the helpless Soviet biplanes...

[M60A3TTS]

Looks as though on the wiki, the I-153s rate of climb is ok, but Me-262 is off. Rate of climb is listed on the wiki as 3,900 and not 2,900.

[Lobster]

Does no one check the aircraft's stats???? Not like it isn't posted all over the net. [8|]

Climb rate for I-15bis was about 1500 ft/min (1490 or there about). The I-153 was an improvement of that aircraft with a more powerful turbocharged engine, went back to gull wings, retractable gear, some other improvements like higher rate of fire. Some would say the climb rate for the I-153 maybe a bit too high. But most would say it is appropriate to have it slightly over 3k ft/min or about 943 m/min. This was arguably the best combat biplane made. Couldn't really push a combat biplane faster no matter the power plant. You didn't want to put this thing into a spin. Most likely come to a nasty stop at ground level.

[fbs]

Alright... another example... I-16 Type 18... a 1938 design, is listed with climb rate of 3,192 ft/min, still over-climbing the Spitfire IX, a 1944 design, which has better speed, power, power/weight, engine, turbo-charger and everything else one can think of. Same thing with Hs 123A and other biplanes.

I suspect these figures were measured with different methodologies. I think it's one thing to have initial climb speed of 3,000 ft/min at sea level on an unloaded airplane and another to have sustained climb speed of 2,500 ft/min at 10,000 ft on a combat-loaded airplane. After all, performance envelopes are a complex thing to measure, different countries measured them in different ways, and you can't really define them completely by listing a single value... so I think the game lists some banana-type-values for pre-war biplanes, and some orange-type-values for war-time monoplanes.

I can't get in my mind that a biplane can evade a Me 262 just by climbing up... that seems just pretty impossible.

[fbs]

Another thought is that I wouldn't be surprised if Stalin published or leaked inflated performance values for the aircrafts, just to confuse everybody and make them fear the Red Army.

After all, if there's one thing that I'm sure Stalin and his generals didn't want was to look weak. There are plenty of stories of soviet weapons that looked better than they really were - Mig 25 for example.

[Gabriel B.]

ORIGINAL: fbs

I'm still skeptical...

I-153BS.. loaded weight 1,900 kg... power 775 hp... power/ratio = 407 hp/ton
Spitfire IX... loaded weight 3,350 kg... power 1,720 hp... power/ratio = 513 hp/ton

So the Spitfire has more speed, power, power/weight ratio, maneuverability and everything else you can think of compared to the I-153... I find it very, very hard to believe that an obsolete biplane can just climb up and escape all these other fighters...

The reason is that if they actually could climb faster, then the pilots would just climb up, dive down to attack, then climb up again and so forth, and that way keep the initiative, while all accounts I read about Germany in Russia is that the Germans were the ones that could keep climbing up and diving down on the helpless Soviet biplanes...

Actualy ,you have a better shot with a early Spit variant , the IX got the cliped wing and weight went up .

wing loading on the i-153 is just 84 kg/sqm while the IX has 149 kg/sqm

[GamesaurusRex]

Similar to several mistakes made in WITP/AE. I've found at least one plane that appears in the Japanese airforce several months before they were even available. (I made a note on the WITP/AE forum). Some other's production are linked to the wrong engines from factories.

[swkuh]

Doubt that climb rates are used to determine outcomes of air combat in this game... But then, what does? Combat algorithms are not well known outside of a small circle of experts.

Then, there are tactical adjustments, such as neutralizing Me262's by patrolling over their airbases and nailing them at take-off/landing time.

[Denniss]

The function of climbrates is still a mystery to me. I don't know how they were originally calculated and how they affect (or not) combat outcome. Probably traces back to old GG games like BoB or 12 o' clock high. That's why I did not really touch them.
The climbrate may be calculated to be static from sealevel up to max alt or dynamic (starting high on sea level and reduction with higher alt levels).

[fbs]

A bit more food for thought, from Aces High - these guys seem to be pretty serious about their game. A caveat about quoting figures from a game... a game is a game, of course, but I think these folks took a lot of care about this, given the game is pretty much about flying.

I think these graphs illustrate the problem of listing a single figure when the actual number varies quite a lot depending on a number of factors...

for I-16



for Spitfire IX:



and Spitfire V:



and Me-262A:

[morvael]

I see the climb variable used in air to air combat between two flights (aircraft from single air group taking part in a mission) where a randomly determined value between 0.5 and 1.0 climb is compared to the other's side unmodified climb value and (when the unmodified value is smaller than the random value) it gives some disruption to the flight. Disruption is not easy to describe. I see it's used in many other tests in the code, so it probably affects overall efficiency in performing all "tasks" in the air like intercepting planes, accuracy of fire, bombing and so on. As with many other algorithms in the game it's really hard to tell what is the effect of climb in hard numbers as the formulas are very complicated with loops and many random tests (hard to build a probability formula for something like this and present a simple distribution/effect chart), but for sure there is some effect of climb on air missions, so it's better to have higher climb than lower.

[swkuh]

Right, got it, higher climb rate is worth something... don't think I want to know more...

I work to oppose enemy air with solid formations of best available equipment w/whatever climb rates may apply...

(Some aspects of this game have been & are being overworked.)

[fbs]

ORIGINAL: morvael

I see the climb variable used in air to air combat between two flights (aircraft from single air group taking part in a mission) where a randomly determined value between 0.5 and 1.0 climb is compared to the other's side unmodified climb value and (when the unmodified value is smaller than the random value) it gives some disruption to the flight. Disruption is not easy to describe. I see it's used in many other tests in the code, so it probably affects overall efficiency in performing all "tasks" in the air like intercepting planes, accuracy of fire, bombing and so on. As with many other algorithms in the game it's really hard to tell what is the effect of climb in hard numbers as the formulas are very complicated with loops and many random tests (hard to build a probability formula for something like this and present a simple distribution/effect chart), but for sure there is some effect of climb on air missions, so it's better to have higher climb than lower.

Appreciate it