Okay - so, I don’t know how many different videos I’ve watched on these subjects, and at this point - I’m not sure if there is something I’m just not understanding in the videos, or if they are specifically talking about RB/SB and there are differences in Arcade that make them less useful, if not useless.
The first is actually using the Fox-3’s. It’s been a while since I used my F-14A, where I don’t ever remember having too much of an issue locking on to and firing all 4 of the AIM-54A’s I bring. But I know I had some issues with the 14B, and once they added starter 120’s to the other planes, those as well, and coming back to these planes during the event, I can’t get the damn TWS or the TWS HDN to even detect so I can lock up 2 targets, let alone up to 8+ if I actually had the full missile loadouts unlocked. Meanwhile the RWR goes insane as I watch 3 guys go full Ace Combat launching all their missiles and dozens of red diamonds head my way. I can have my nose pointed at a guy 7-10 km away, coming right at me, and it won’t lock him up. I’ve even gone through to set it to default and increase the range for match start, and it still seems like it just doesn’t pick things up. Not sure what detail I’m missing here to be able to actually launch against multiple targets, and have my missiles be as effective as other peoples seem to be, other than y’know the part where most of them are using non-US ones that have a 40-50G overload.
Then there is dodging. I’ve seen all the stuff about ‘notching’, about going for the deck, and the success rate is maybe about the same as a coin flip. But then again trying to figure out what I might be doing wrong using the missiles - stumbled across the radar section of the wiki where it says ‘Surface clutter is not present in Arcade Battles’ - which makes it sound like trying for the deck to confuse the missile isn’t actually working I’m just hoping it’s actually dumb enough to run in to the ground before it gets to me. It also mentioned that ‘notching’ works vs PD, but that it doesn’t necessarily work vs other forms at which point it says to dive and make use of ground clutter - but if that’s not in Arcade - then I can’t do that.
I wanna play some of the newer planes I’ve unlocked and bought, I want to get the 2 newest to make sure I have that research bonus in the other lines as I work on them, and even if I want to go down to where the F-14A currently is at 12.3, or run it with only other 11.0 to try and get it to 12.0 matchmaking, I end up coming across AV-8B+'s that are at 13.3 or got themselves down to 13.0 so still need to be able to dodge the AMRAAM’s. So any help being more consistent in getting hits with these missiles and dodging them is much appreciated.