Beginner's Arcade Battles Tips and Tricks from an AB Junkie.

[Hidden_Hamster 666]

G'day all.  Grab a coffee and a snack if you're into long reading.  This is Part 1 of 2, which I will post tonight or tomorrow.

 

I thought I'd post some things that I have found useful in playing Arcade battles.  I'll try to focus mainly on Tiers 1-2, since it seems that's where the majority of players have zero idea how to play.  By tier 3, people have at least some basic understanding about planes and game mechanics.  I have only played and researched all planes, in all nations, in tiers 1-3.  So I will not comment on tiers 4-5.

 

There's generally no "one size fits all" solution to doing well in Arcade battles.  Each nation's planes have their own strong and weak points.  So to apply the same tactics to every single plane in your arsenal will usually have you asking "OMG, what am I doing wrong??". 

 

One of the main lessons for anyone is to maximize your plane's strong points, and minimize your plane's weak points.  Which means, you have to UNDERSTAND what your plane is capable of.  You also HAVE to mentally keep track of the planes you fight against.  Your knowledge comes from experience, so if you mentally (subconsciously even?) keep track of your past battles, you'll be able to make quick decisions in combat.

 

When setting up your battle lineup of planes, keep an eye on the BR ratings.  Gaijin may or may not get rid of the BR rating system, but until they do, you might as well use it to your advantage.  At the moment, MatchMaker calculates YOUR battle BR by taking the average of 3 of your highest BR planes.  Try to set up your planes without too much BR variance.  So, if you have 6 garage slots.  Bring 4 planes (for example) with BR of 2.0, and 2 planes with 2.3.  It will help you get into consistent battles where you're not overwhelmed fighting much higher BR planes.  I know the next planes are fun to research, but if you have 4 planes with BR 2.0, 1 plane with BR 3.0, and your last plane with BR 3.7+, you'll be having some tough battles.  You will not be able to consistently do well in battles, and you won't be able to research the next planes as quickly.  Not to mention make good Silver with every battle.  Keep in mind, if you add planes from the next Tier, even with the same / lower / slightly higher BR rating, you'll usually see battles in the next / higher tier.

 

For any nation, be highly aware which planes are turn-fighters with good maneuverability, and which are good climbers.  Hover your mouse over each plane in your hangar.  Look at the Turn Rate and Climb Rate numbers.  Any Climb Rate number over 22+ makes for a decent climber.  Which means you can climb fast and high to intercept bombers and play from above, zooming down on the enemy and climbing back up.  Known as Boom and Zoom.  You're wasting a good climbing / bomber interceptor plane if you're playing at grass level.  Look at your planes' Turn Rates.  Anything in the 14-18 range is a good Turn Fighter.  You're better off going against other fighters in circle fights.  Some planes are good at both, Turning and Climbing.  However they may be extremely fragile and can't handle taking a hit.  Some planes are poor climbers AND poor turn fighters.  In which case, you'll have to play by constantly keeping a straight line and flying as fast as possible at ALL times. You have to play to the planes' strength and see which works well for you.  You may not like the bomber protection / interceptor role because you get fewer kills.  But you can usually win battles by denying high altitude to bombers and keeping the bases safe.  Not to mention, you won't spend as much time climbing, since you have a high Climb Rate.

 

Learn your maps, especially Ground Strike ones.  Learn where enemy ground attack planes will usually run for.  Head there if you're in a fighter, and try to intercept those first attackers.  Fighter melees tend to happen in the middle of the map, on the shortest routes.  However, if you fly to where the ground targets are, you can usually come up on bombers / ground attackers / and fighters trying to kill pointless ground targets.  You'll usually have the upper hand on them.

 

Support your teammates.  I can't stress that enough.  Please, for the love of GOD, stop trying to be the first to kill those 3 pointless AAA trucks or AA guns while your teammates are getting jumped 3 vs 1.  Clear their tails and help them.  Having an extra plane in battle is a good thing.  Having less enemy planes is an even better thing.  Those easy truck / AA kills won't count towards your win, and if you're only number farming easy ground targets, you're not getting any better at this game against other players.

 

Never, EVER go head--to head against a Heavy Fighter.  If you two are playing chicken, and you think you'll win, think again.  His 4 x 20mm cannons  and 4 machine guns in the nose are an extremely valid argument against doing that.  Evade the head-on attack, and come around him.  Heavy fighters usually can't match a regular fighter in turn fights.  You'll kill him easy.  (Japanese Heavy fighters are an exception, as they can turn extremely well).  BF 110, Beaufighter, Do-217,and even some Attacker planes like the A-20 will usually dominate in a Head-on pass.  If you don't know which ones to avoid, just look at the Tech tree's for other nations.  It's pretty simple.

 

Rockets.  Mount them and use them.  At all times.  Practice firing rockets at an enemy plane doing a head-to-head pass with you.  Fire your whole salvo at about .6 or less distance, rapidly, while aiming just a hair higher than your circle reticle / lead indicator.  And avoid debris by diving or climbing hard.  Rockets are a nasty surprise for anyone who thinks they can head-to-head win against you.  They're also great against bombers.  Come up behind one, and release 3 rockets at about .3 - .4 distance.  As you get more practice, you can usually bring down a bomber with 1-2 rockets.  And they have a serious "fun" factor.  Any loss in plane performance is WELL worth having them.  And once you fire them, your plane's performance is back to normal until you reload them.

 

Play and research as many planes in as many trees and nations as possible.  You will learn which planes are fit your play style, and which ones to avoid going against in battle.

 

Learn and use Stealth ammo as much as possible.  It's great for one reason ALONE.  when you're shooting someone, there's no indicator WHERE they're getting shot from.  People start panicking and avoiding invisible fire.  Tracers and the rest of ammo will always tell your opponent where the fire is coming from.  And good players can learn to avoid the tracers behind them, staying alive MUCH longer or getting away.  Stealth ammo is more expensive, but the advantage is enormous.  When your opponent has no idea where the fire is coming from, you're at a huge positional advantage, as he has NO idea where to fly to avoid you.  He has to look around, turn around, fiddle with his keyboard and increase his stress level.  While you pummel him.  It's not easy to get used to, and you have to rely on "sparks" to see where your rounds hit the enemy planes.  But the "anonymity" provided by stealth ammo is a huge advantage.

 

Numbers aren't everything.  If you're the player who cares about nothing but his end-battle numbers being higher than anyone else's, you're probably losing more than winning.  Help your teammates.  Kill ground targets that MATTER for winning a battle, not just put numbers on the board.  Defend bases.  Attack flaming / damaged / slow planes / biplanes.  The faster the opposing player runs out of planes to use, the easier your win will be.  Even if you have to ram your damaged plane into a biplane.  Do it.  Having 1 enemy player exhaust all his planes is a very good thing.

 

I hope this long post will help some of the new / newer players.  I will have part 2 coming up today or tomorrow.  Good luck to everyone!

Edited November 14, 2014 by Hidden_Hamster

[Red_Angel_6 582]

Good basic stuff Hammy.

 

A couple of things:

 

A reasonably experienced pilot will be using C and the mini map, your using stealth ammo is not going to make the difference between him knowing where you are, he already knows.  The guys you sneak up on and blast with Stealth can just as well be taken down by any ammo, as they aren't looking anyway.  Personally I like a mixture because a bit of AP-I can set them alight quickly.

 

Rockets.  Yeah, it's a judgement call.  I am going to side with my man Courtney337 on this one and say that after a certain point the trade off between flight performance and hitting power isn't really worth it.  I would say that rockets are helpful in Tier One before you get good, but if (for example) you are flying the LaGG 3-11 you have got a 20mm cannon for God's sake.  Head ons are strictly for someone who doesn't know what they are doing and you are better off barrel rolling out of there before effective rocket distance anyway.

 

The most important skill for a new player to learn is situational awareness.   New players get tunnel vision and target fixated.  They dive into the furball and don't consider what danger they are putting themselves in.  They don't appreciate what or who is around them.  As a result they die often and ram/get rammed frequently.  They then cry a river about how unfair the game is.  No, dude, you died because you put yourself in a position where you could be killed.

 

But, nice work fella.

[Flashtirade 1,944]

Learn how your plane performs against other planes. Just because flight models are boosted doesn't mean that every plane flies the same.

 

When unlocking modules in late Era 3 and above, plan the order you'll earn them in because RP gain doesn't scale well and you'll want to get the most out of your matches. I would suggest going for engine and ammo belts over everything else as a general rule, but there will be planes where other things should take priority (like better bomb loads for bombers and "new [weapons]" upgrades for those guns with terrible accuracy). Be aware of how many upgrades it takes to unlock the next tier in the upgrade tree, as well as if some upgrades are necessary to acquire another one that you want.

 

If there are two allied planes chasing a target that you want to go after, pick another one.

 

Don't be that guy who rushes headfirst into the enemy. It almost never works and isn't worth it even if it does.

 

"Better at low altitude" does not mean scrape your fuselage on the ground. Your plane should perform excellently up to at least 3000m.

[Darkace47 277]

I would like a tip on how to kill with P51 in this patch. Bnz doesn't seem to ever work in one pass and the guns do hardly any damage. I don't recall it being this weak in 1.35/1.37, would some one tell me how to put planes in the grave right away in a first pass most of the time at high closing speed.

 

I wasn't the best USA before, but now I have gotten even worse I think. 

 

As for head on attacks well I don't follow this mind set very well some times when playing the germans or Russians for that matter, but just remember if your forced into one you made a mistake before hand that led to it and if you chose to head on or try to force one on a lower energy plane then your making a mistake right there. It's gets complex and with how crap gets at the later tiers sometimes stuff just seems to happen. (A ki 200 today dove from the fog were I couldn't see it until less than 1.5km away and so I took my shots before quickly disengaging it with the kill right after when his flaming rice rocket went down in a blaze of the randomness of AB.)  

[KrebsCOHO 1,445]

Good basic stuff Hammy.

 

A couple of things:

 

A reasonably experienced pilot will be using C and the mini map, your using stealth ammo is not going to make the difference between him knowing where you are, he already knows.  The guys you sneak up on and blast with Stealth can just as well be taken down by any ammo, as they aren't looking anyway.  Personally I like a mixture because a bit of AP-I can set them alight quickly.

 

Rockets.  Yeah, it's a judgement call.  I am going to side with my man Courtney337 on this one and say that after a certain point the trade off between flight performance and hitting power isn't really worth it.  I would say that rockets are helpful in Tier One before you get good, but if (for example) you are flying the LaGG 3-11 you have got a 20mm cannon for God's sake.  Head ons are strictly for someone who doesn't know what they are doing and you are better off barrel rolling out of there before effective rocket distance anyway.

 

The most important skill for a new player to learn is situational awareness.   New players get tunnel vision and target fixated.  They dive into the furball and don't consider what danger they are putting themselves in.  They don't appreciate what or who is around them.  As a result they die often and ram/get rammed frequently.  They then cry a river about how unfair the game is.  No, dude, you died because you put yourself in a position where you could be killed.

 

But, nice work fella.

 

Stealth has been confirmed as being the most damaging rounds but there is some exceptions to the rule like tracers for the thunderbolt. Overly I find stealth to be a lot deadlier for the damage and also for the fact it can't be seen. It's hard to judge when to break off in a head-on if you can't see the bullets coming out of their plane.

 

I would say rockets aren't worth it unless for the lols. Everything dies fast enough this patch from normal bullet fire including bombers.

[BIRD_LAWYER 330]

Good basic stuff Hammy.

 

A couple of things:

 

A reasonably experienced pilot will be using C and the mini map, your using stealth ammo is not going to make the difference between him knowing where you are, he already knows.  The guys you sneak up on and blast with Stealth can just as well be taken down by any ammo, as they aren't looking anyway.  Personally I like a mixture because a bit of AP-I can set them alight quickly.

 

 

Stealth ammo is still the best belt for cannons for head on engagements. Especially in lower levels where people aren't as experienced and do not think about dodging if they don't see bullets.

[Sidiros 4,914]

Stealth is always the first unlock I pursue; followed by Rockets.       Sure you take a performance hit, but man...  

 

I still get an adrenaline spike when blasting someone with one in the head-on or that plane that seems to be bullet proof.    Also, a great way to earn RP/lions, and win games by taking out destroyers, cargo ships, pillboxes, and tanks.   Well worth the performance hit to me.

[Hidden_Hamster 666]

Exactly this.  Low tier arcade battles almost require as much versatility to keep winning consistently.  Too many people are happy to head-on pass, and a rocket burst usually ends that for the remainder of their battle.  Plus ground attacking in a pinch with 1% / 1% clinch game is worth the win.  Any performance loss is quickly regained after you fire the salvo, and usually any given plane is not alive for the 2nd reload of the rockets.

[Agent_Of_Change 2,231]

Good stuff hamster, good stuff indeed.

 

Also Sibr you are on point.  The first skill that will up your game immensely is active situational awareness.  There is nothing else that can help you learn the lessons you need to know than knowing what just happened, sitting in a cockpit wondering you just got oneshotted is too late for the lesson.

 

 

Now for my list of must know tips and tricks for AB applicable universally to all tiers of AB: (repeated some points but this is just the things i find important off the top of my head)

 

1. As was said know your plane and fly to it's strengths for that see point two
2. Check out this You tube channel https://www.youtube.com/user/novocas7rian/videos Long5hots videos are excellent and his tips will help you out
3. Climb don't dive at the start. Altitude is speed, speed is life.  Having more energy than your opponent gives you a great advantage
4. Avoid furballing without a clear exit, yeah furballing can be fun but you also get dead quickly because you can't watch all your angles while circling and staying on a target and doing all that in the dirt.
5. Try to keep you plane alive, it sounds easy but just run through your odds of survival anytime to move to engage, if you keep your planes alive you spend less on repairs and generally will start to score higher.
6. Always watch your BR line up, nothing sucks more than accidentally ending up in a higher match than you meant to be in.
7. Always be looking around, use that free look any time you aren't actively firing.
8. Use your keyboard controls, manually using rudder, flaps, and elevators can give you a massive edge on those who don't.
9. Pick a reasonable convergence and try to only fire within +/- .1 km of that convergence (ie. convergence of 500m only fire between 400 and 600 meters)  your guns will have a much greater effect.
10. Your ammo belts DO matter, stealth has it's strengths but depending on the nation is not always teh best belt to equip.  a good rule of thumb is equip the most HE for cannons, and the most AP or AP-I for MG's
11. Teamwork, teamwork, teamwork. if you have altitude and a wingman you are the next best thing to invincible
12. Lastly (and this is my bias) kill all the bombers first, in AB as a fighter you won't be able to have long fights if enemy bombers are ending the game through blowing up your air field, deal with them first and you will then have time to play.

Edited November 19, 2014 by Agent_Of_Change