EDIT 12/10/2015: This advice may be obsolete as of recent patches. Take it with a grain of salt. For example I still aim while zoomed in, but the Vanduul are better about evasive flying when close to boundaries. Although with the impending release of AC 2.0 (mini-PU) there won't BE any boundaries. At any rate, fly safe!
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I just finished about an hour of play between Super Hornet and Merlin. SH has gimbals, and Merlin does not. I play with MKB. I seem to be having a MUCH easier time with the new flight model, and I think the Vanduul are still "getting used to it" (ie. very predictable movements).
One thing that I experimented with much more than my previous bouts is the cockpit ZOOM feature (default = mouse scroll where). While matching speed, and ZOOMED in, I (don't laugh) kind of felt like a surgeon slicing off various parts: wings... actually aiming for the cockpit... etc. My hit accuracy greatly improved.
On top of that, I managed to stay behind the Vanduul more easily by making sure that little "dotted line" (their actual direction of flight?) stayed vertical, 12 o'clock position, as much as possible by rolling my craft. This made my maneuvering thrusters keep up with the tight turns more easily since I was always "leaning into the turn" so to speak; I was pretty much always on their six. I constantly got that new "untouchable" bonus that shows up when you kill stuff, now. I also gently used my lateral (left / right) thrusters to fine tune my aim rather than mouse yaw for minor adjustments. Took a little getting used to, but it feels like I can get more accuracy with this technique.
Additionally, I seemed to have more accurate shots on target when (ZOOMED in...) aiming NOT for the center dot of the lead pip, but where the circle of the lead pip actually crosses that flight path dotted line I mentioned before (I use the "lead" pip ahead of the enemy craft--not the "trailing" pip that draws a line from my crosshairs). Imagine slicing a pizza in half, and aiming for the "corner" farthest away from the ship. Let me emphasize that when zoomed all the way in, this intersection can equal quite a bit of difference compared to the center dot of the lead pip. A pilot might even get greater accuracy if using the "look" feature (default "L"), but I didn't experiment with this, very much.
Lastly, a benefit of keeping the flight path dotted line in the 12'oclock position means that the target will usually be a sort of top-down ("larger") profile for laying on hits, as opposed to a smaller cross-section of hitting something when you are on his 3 o'clock or 9 o'clock.
I hope all this kind of makes sense. Bottom line: things were much easier using these tricks, and I hope this helps you guys and gals, too!
Oh and don't forget to strafe and roll when under fire / jousting. Since Vanduul are programmed to aim for "their" version of the pip, it completely screws up their aiming solution when you are moving in all three dimensions like that.
A word of caution: this was strictly with Vanduul swarm. I'm not suggesting that these tactics work in Spectrum. Maybe they will.. Maybe not. Just saying, don't necessarily expect the same results I did, here, if you apply these techniques to PvP.
Super last word (sorry): I thought I also noticed a bit of a trick with the AI. If you "lure" a Vanduul ship really close to the border, it seems like they spend a few seconds flying straight away from it to put some distance between them and the border. They don't seem to take evasive action during this time and make really easy targets. Maybe that would be a (exploit'ish) way of getting some easy kills. I didn't spend much time validating it to a huge extent, but at least 3-4 times it seems as if this were the case. Just a thought; let me know if YOU try it what happens.
Okay I'm done; good luck out there! o7
