It's exactly the same. While the WW1 aircraft are slower, climb slower, and dive slower so do your adversary's everything that works with a WW2 aircraft will work with a WW1 aircraft. Think of fighting a D-VII with your Spad like fighting BF-109 with a P-47.
While the general theory of ACM for guns combat is the same across all eras, there are key differences in its application in different eras. This stems from each era's differences in 2 key ratios of airplane and gun performance. These ratios are only important to us "time-travelling" sim pilots who have to become proficient with WW1, WW2, Korea, etc., so don't expect to find them mentioned in ACM books. However, I find them essential to taking skills from 1 era and applying them to another.
The 1st ratio is that of effective guns range to the sustained turn radius of the typical fighter of the period in question:
- WW1: turn radius much smaller than guns range
- WW2: turn radius approximately equal to guns range
- Korea: turn radius way bigger than guns range
The 2nd ratio is the typical zoom ability to the typical sustained turn performance of fighters of the era:
- WW1: turn usually better than zoom
- WW2: turn approximately equal to zoom
- Korea: turn somewhat worse than zoom
So, suppose the bulk of your sim experience is in WW2 E-fighters. You know what works and what doesn't for that era, as in how big to make your loops and high yoyos, how far to extend before reversing, how far to follow a stallfighter in a turn, etc. Now you want to "time travel" to WW1. You'll quickly find that you can't fly the same way you did in WW2.
In WW2, the E-fighter can zoom up completely out of range of the stallfighter's guns, and can use the "rope a dope" in perfect safety, staying just tantalizingly out of reach until the enemy stalls out. And when the E-fighter needs to disengage, he can make a front-hemisphere pass on the enemy and be long gone before the enemy turns around. And it wasn't a problem to maintain the speed necessary to do all this even with the enemy bled down to low speed because the WW2 E-fighter usually had enough firepower to kill with a snapshot.
In WW1, OTOH, E-fighters have the same weak guns as everybody else so require the same sorts of fairly good shooting opportunities to kill. This means they can't fight effectively with as high a speed advantage over the target as in WW2. This, and their relatively anemic zoom abilities, mean they can't zoom up out of range directly above the target but have to rely more on horizontal extensions. But because the target's turn radius is much smaller than guns range, the E-fighter in WW1 has to worry about being shot in the back during the extension even after a front-hemisphere pass. Thus, horizontal extensions have to be made relatively longer in WW1 than in WW2 (compared to the turn radius of the target).
Thus, while the WW1 E-fighter is trying to accomplish the same general task as in WW2, he has to go about it in a rather different manner. And IMHO, it's harder in WW1 than in WW2, mostly because the WW1 E-fighter isn't packing 4x MG151/20s
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