RE: focus when flying combat?
It definitely takes some getting used to when you have several in the sky at once. Get really familiar with your plane so you pretty much know what you are doing without even looking at it. It seems really hard with less than 4 in the air if you are all offensive. You just keep looping around each other in the beginning. You can designate one person as the target which helps focusing. Another thing that has seemed to help here is to fly you planes on low rates to force more pursuit than fur-balling, which will also decrease the mid-air collisions during the acclimation process. The tightness of the formation will depend on the individuals flying styles and the field you are at. Keep at it and it will become easier, but it may never be easy. Some pilots have a LOT of strategy about setting up a person in the turns and such, others fly by instinct alone, and may be the ones easier to set up. Many look for ways to make a defensive maneuver into a shot on the others ribbon. Sticky wings help with actual cuts, but you can usually tell when you would have gotten a cut by teh ribbon draping over teh wing in flight. It simply saves on ribbons. Using the forestry tape for practice makes the ribbons last a long time as well, but it is more expensive per streamer. Good luck.