THOU SHALT NOTS

The techniques of E Mgmt are built around two prohibitions: Thou Shalt Not Get Slow, and Thou Shalt Not Get Low. In other words, don't reduce your E state. Getting slow is bad because it prevents use of the vertical for ACM. Getting slow enough even prevents use of the horizontal because attempts at tight turns result in stalls, making the plane a sitting duck. That is, the plane's useful alt has been shoved down far below its current alt. Speed can be regained by diving down to the useful alt, but this can only be done so much before the ground gets in the way. It is easy to cure being too fast or too high, but speeding up and climbing both take time you do not have in combat. This makes combat essentially a one-way street toward lower E states. Some of this is unavoidable due to the Second Law of Thermodynamics, but proper E Mgmt will delay this process as much as physically possible.

NOT GETTING SLOW: There are three main things that slow planes down: throttling back, pointing the nose up, and pulling high G. You have complete control of the throttle so this method can be discounted. Vertical moves and high G, however, are integral parts of ACM, so must be done carefully to avoid large losses of speed.

The first thing to realize about high G is that it is seldom necessary for the largest part of a fight--gaining angles. 3-4 Gs are all you need for most manoeuvres, which keeps speed loss at a minimum. Only use more G, to get an immediate, KILLING shot, or to avoid receiving one. Never pull high G just to take or dodge a snapshot which will only do minor damage. First, most snapshots miss anyway. More importantly, however, is that merely damaging the target is an insufficient return on your E investment. The speed loss incurred greatly reduces your options and increases your vulnerability for the remainder of the fight. [NOTE: Snapshots almost always result in overshoots, which cost you angles as well.]

The other main issue of G loading is the rate at which it is applied. Yanking the stick back to a certain G level causes a much greater speed loss than slowly easing back the stick, even at lower levels like 3-4 Gs. This is because yanking the stick causes a large, sudden increase in the plane's angle of attack, which creates a braking effect due to more drag. Also, a big enough angle of attack can cause a slight stall, which adds even more drag. And finally, yanking the stick can lead to overshooting the desired G level, making it easier to black out. Thus, you must remain calm in the midst of the life and death swirl of a furball and be gentle with the stick. How gentle you need to be depends on many things: your current speed and alt, the type of plane you're flying, and how desperate the situation is, for example. So like with everything else in E-fighting, you must achieve a balance here.

Pointing the nose up is a result of pulling Gs, so the first step in doing this right is to pull the Gs correctly as detailed above, to maintain as high a speed as possible going into the manoeuvre. The next step is to know when to point the nose back down. If you have a sufficient E advantage, you can safely level off at a fairly low speed above an nme. If the fight is more even, however, you must dive back down to regain your speed. Always do this while you still have enough speed to go over the top--avoid stalling at all costs, even if you have not yet gained the angles you want. Coming back down in time will give you the speed to try another yoyo next pass, but stalling will almost always get you killed.


NOT GETTING LOW: Two main things eat up alt: diving to regain or maintain speed, and diving to get a shot. Regaining speed means you have already blown your speed and must now dive down to your useful alt so you can manoeuvre. You are drawing on your E bank account to pay the bills for an unwise spending spree. Maintaining speed means that your are currently engaged in blowing your speed but are diving simultaneously so that your speed stays the same as you get lower. This typically happens by doing hard, nose-low turns. Both of these problems can easily be avoided by not doing the things that blow speed. And while nose-low turns are better than flat turns from an E Mgmt perspective, they are only marginally so. While speed is more important for ACM than alt, alt is harder to get back once lost. Thus, moves which cause constant, heavy alt expenditure should be avoided unless you a) can maintain an E advantage on the nme the whole time, and b) you are not worried about nme reinforcements arriving with more E than you will have when you finish.

Diving for a shot is a very common failing. But I have told you to get an alt advantage every chance you get--how do you use that without diving? The answer is to not dive AT the target, but to dive to the target's alt while some distance away, and then approach the target as close to level as possible, but still going at your useful speed. In other words, fly down 2 sides of a right triangle, straight down to the target's alt and then flat across to meet him, instead of flying along the hypotenuse directly at him. This will enable you to zoom back up after the pass, maintaining your alt advantage, instead of diving below the target and having to pull back to being level before you can start going back up. If you find yourself about make a diving firing pass anyway, break it off early and zoom well before you come into guns range.

 

What most dweebs do, though, is dive directly at the target and try to take a shot in this dive. This invariably results in them maintaining a steep dive right through the target in an effort to get the sights on, which in turn means they overshoot WAY below the target. This is because the nme either comes up to meet them, giving them a head-on shot, or turns flat, giving them a 90^ deflection shot, neither of which usually hits, let alone kills. Thus, this is the vertical equivalent of blowing speed by pulling high G for a snapshot. The attacking plane's speed means it is losing alt rapidly in the dive and also makes its turn radius very large, so even more alt is lost just trying to level out. Thus, when the attacker tries to zoom back up, he will be lucky to get back up to the alt of the target, so the attacker loses most or all of his E advantage on this first pass. What's more, the target can easily get on the attacker's 6. Thus, this is the final Thou Shalt Not. Never make a diving firing pass unless the target is also diving.