The Phoenix is terrible when fighting more advanced aircraft that have a digital RWR with missile launch detection. It can do wonder against phantoms, mig-23, Mirage F1 and other F-14A whose situational awareness is limited but I don’t see how an F-16/F-15/Mig-29SMT, SU-27SM player that isn’t level 12 can be fooled by one. It’s a missile that “scales” terribly. The Fakour at least has the phenomenal acceleration to reduce reaction time as well as being much more maneuverable than the Aim-54.
(US) F-14A is a dead plane, the F-14B has no reason to exist when the F-15A is an option and if you want the FOX-3 gameplay you can pick the av8b+ also at 13.0 with amraam + aim9M. Btw I’ve never understood why the F-14B was problematic but not the harrier when you can launch aim-120 at clueless phantoms (???) Even in a 13.7 game, you have the same weapons as other top tier, it’s never a big deal. Never got a 60% > wr in a plane so easily.
I don’t get many kills with them now, and I suspect the reason is that most players have adapted to the constant stream of Fakour-90 which by comparison makes the AIM-54 seem quite trivial
Regarding players likely to be hit by AIM-54, the usual suspects like AFK’ers, zombers, botters etc. are now reached by Fakour-90 first thanks to it’s huge acceleration and speed advantage.
There are still some features missing from the AIM-54A and C that should be added now that the F-14s are moving up in BR. I’m thinking higher G-limit, more aggressive loft profile, reduced smoke motors for C-model, etc.
i feel like alot of the US players cant understand the fact that they got put up in br due to there missiles, why would they just get better missiles if the missiles it has is the issue in the first place???
If that were true, the AIM-54A/C would be constantly wiping out Eagles, Flankers, and Falcons which is doing combat maneuvers, but it is not. In most cases, being killed by AIM-54 is due to either not having an RWR or ignoring warnings from the RWR.
It doesn’t even have a death zone at short range like other ARHs such as Dirby/R-Darter, and PL-12 etc.
I mean, while you have a natural right to complain about AIM-54 if you were flying a J35XS and F-104S.ASA, other aircraft don’t, especially there are some aircraft that has modern digital RWR.
The issue with the F-14A and B at 12.7-13.0 now aren’t necessarily them having bad missiles, but for the A, its absolutely atrocious RWR, and the flight performance for both. The B not so much but the A is by comparison really bad. It’s basically a worse F-15A in every way.
It literally wiped only the bomber who ignored the RWR warnings.
Problem is like most premium jet spammers currently, they don’t try to kill the player, but use it as B-17, or are sent back to the hangar by the AIM-54 before they do base bombing. In this case, the problem is not with the F-14 but with those premium spammers who skipped for learning how to play Jet games without bombing bases.
It is not fault of F-14 players that these premium spammers are dumb.
Honestly, it is depressing to see players base bombing with Mirage F1 and F-104S TAF, or even MiG-23ML.
