I have seen many posts about the F-2A ADTW popping up lately, so I’ve decided to make this post to (hopefully) reduce the number repeat posts as well as making it easier for people to answer more of these posts
I’ll do this by looking at some complaints about the F-2A and giving my opinion on them;
- Claim: “The F-2A has a pretty awful flight performance”
Answer: F-2A ADTW in reality has extremely potent flight model, especially for 13.0. As you can see from these charts:
Its flight model outmatches even some 14.7 aircraft mainly in the rate, the only plane better in a dogfight is EF2K and the Gripen is the only worse one that can put up a tough fight in a dogfight.
Further, as we can see with willie walrus duel rankings, F-2A is ranked as 2nd for dueling, ie. place where FM matters a lot.
StatShark - See All Player, Missile, and Vehicle Statistics
As for who Willie is:
Spoiler
Willie is among one of the top ranked TSS players in the game, his focus is centered around jet dueling. He is currently sitting at 27th in the air RB ratings for TSS.
As for air RB, FM performance isn’t as much of a requirement, your aircraft just needs to be quick enough to get around the map, pull enough AOA to defend and accelerate to speed again. All of which the F-2 can do well enough.
- Claim: “Radar is terrible”/No HMD being a big issue
Answer: The F-2’s radar is the second best in the bracket, simply due to the fact that it is an AESA radar, second only to the Kfir C.10 which is also AESA but has better scan angles, some extra gimbal and HMD.
HMD is a luxury reserved for only a few aircraft this br.
AESA radars are better for many reasons;
- They can scan much faster than any mechanical radar, as well as scan a larger area
- They can scan and update much more targets at a time than a mechanical radar can
- All AESA radars have some form of NCTR, which increases your awareness massively as you now have a much better idea of what enemies are where.
You can see how the AESA radar lets me easily pick and choose which enemy is the larger threat due to NCTR, as well as spot them earlier which also lets me engage them first. This is also an example of TRK MEM being abused.
The lack of HMD is frustrating yes, but you can compensate by using manual radar controls to move your scan area closer to where the enemy may be and soft lock them with target cyclic targeting turned on: see clip below (yes, this is the tech tree F-2A but it should demonstrate my point)
I am able to spot and engage him much quicker than I would with any mechanical radar with HMD
Here’s a perfect example with the F-2A ADTW, I see him earlier and therefore can engage him earlier which lets me crank and give my missile time to hit him before he launches. I can also get into the notch much sooner
You can also use tall-box ACM in more clean environments.
Comparing a mechanical radar vs an AESA one is like comparing a short-sighted, senile old lady vs a 20-year-old in his prime with 20/20 vision.
- Claim: “Less minigun bullets (512 vs 940)” - This is from someone comparing F-2 vs F-15J
Do I seriously answer this? Fine I will.
Answer: This is plenty of ammunition, We have aircraft at top tier with only 150 rounds of ammunition and they do just fine.
Gun ammo is certainly not a priority anyways as missiles are your main weapon for getting kills.
- Claim: “Low countermeasure count”
120 countermeasures are absolutely plenty; the best top tier plane (Su-30SM2) has 98.
One of the best 13.0s (the Su-33) literally has 48.
You can negate your “low” countermeasure count by properly managing your flare and chaff usage when flaring/notching.
If people can do it at 14.7 with 98x, you can do it at 13.0 with 120x
- Claim: “The F-15A/F-15J BR changes were warmly received”
They were not warmly received; more compression is objectively bad, it forces vehicles to fight aircraft they are not strong enough to engage relatively fairly, especially if the aircraft being brought down in BR suddenly is the best at that br.
A great example of compression is the 13.0-13.7 MiG-29s vs any flanker at the same BR.
The solution here is to decompress, not compress more.
Some examples of the reactions:
- Complaints about the AIM-7
These are all very much valid, the sparrow is far from the best missile at the br. However, it is not as terrible as people think.
The sparrow can still be manipulated to win certain engagements, often to just scare an enemy to push them defensive or using funky Fox-1 mechanics (such as relocking, TRK MEM and CW) to win engagements. These aren’t elegant or easy solutions, but they are worth trying to give yourself more of an edge.
- Claim: “F-2A ADTW should get Fox-3s”
No it should not.
F-2A getting Fox-3s would result in it moving to 13.7, making the existence of the tech tree F-2 utterly pointless besides wasting your time grinding.
Giving new players more Fox-3s is also bad as it reduces the quality of teams even more than they already are (<5 minute-long games are already common due to people just not knowing how to avoid the first missile launched at them) and will also result in the F-2’s popularity increasing, creating a bigger BR black hole for 12.7 planes to get sucked into.
A better solution is to decompress and/or maybe even give it the AIM-7P or another sparrow with datalink. This lets it stay at 13.0, be somewhat unique and makes the tech tree F-2 still worth getting.
In conclusion: In my opinion, the F-2A ADTW is a perfectly fine aircraft by itself at 13.0, it has many upsides (great flight performance, radar, IR missile kit and defensive kit) with a couple downsides (Sparrows without datalink, no HMD) as with any other 13.0 aircraft.
It is incredibly competitive at 13.0 and is an absolute monster in a downtier, mainly struggling in uptiers against specific Fox-3 carriers that are incredibly undertiered (Su-30s). Giving it a bipolar matchmaker and making it a tricky plane to do exceptionally well in.
- Feel free to comment on the topic and correct any mistakes I have made
