LOL! Bothering the mods because you can’t handle being called out on your insults, stat shaming, and negativity? HAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA
DUDE, GROW UP. You are literally acting like a child 🤣
there technically is but it gives you absolute jack on how to play in live matches so all it teaches you is just scratching the area of bare bones
Give this a watch, it’s a good starting point, then you can adjust to your preferences from there:
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Hello everybody, thanks on your posts but, currently I’ve got a problem.
My usual go-to thing is I go to one of the sides of the map, fly low, and so on. But, I cannot do anything to enemies who just ignore me or dont see me, and the times I am in headons like this, things such as this happens.
(I forgot to change my preset to not have napalm after experimenting.)
You had a good shot, but sometimes sparrows simply go for the wrong target. What I like to do is press U to view where the missile is looking and then immediately relock the ‘wrong’ target or shoot another missile on the ‘correct’ target. However, I would not really call what you did missile wise much of a mistake, just a bit unlucky.
You primarily made one big mistake: going too high and not doing anything effective about the incoming missile. I see that you are dumping chaff and flares, but chaff does not help anything in pure headons.
What you should have done was either start off at ~70m altitude ready to dive down to 30m when a missile was incoming (or ready to dive behind cover). Or as soon as you saw the missile diamond you should have dived towards the ground.
What I like to do is also bring the gunpod and simply spam it in headons if the enemy is dodging the missiles. It can be a bit tricky to aim, and is certainly not risk free, but it can be surprisingly effective since many people don’t expect it. It’s worth considering at least. You could feasibility kill the F-18 in the clip with your gun.
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I see, the chaff was a missinput due to some pannicking but about the missile diamond icon, im pretty sure it only appeared a little before i started panic weaving, hence why i did it so late.
At first i was surprised he didnt fire a missile and i was free to go, but then that happened.
But ive got a couple more questions on how to engage.
What can i do to planes that ignore me/run away?
The aim 9h’s seem lackluster as ive seen one of my sidewinders go for a single pair of flares.
My radar cant get a nice enough lock so i dont bother firing them.
This usually happens and after i give up they can just turn around and go to my tail as i cant really do much about it with my turning, and ive had moments where the enemies Aim9l ignored several flares
And
Is it normal for me to often get just “Hit”, upon a missile connecting, and a little more rarely critical hits.
Edit:
Im currently on my phone and about the f18, a little before the end of the encounter, i tried to go with the guns, but he turned away so i decided to keep on and try keep my speed
What can i do to planes that ignore me/run away?
Try killing the planes ignoring you with your gun if possible. If they run away I would generally try to find another easier target. If the guy you’re shooting at is the only one close or if it’s the last guy you should follow and wait for the perfect IR shot (or get close enough for guns).
The aim 9h’s seem lackluster as ive seen one of my sidewinders go for a single pair of flares.
My radar cant get a nice enough lock so i dont bother firing them
Both correct, you are significantly less effective when chasing. However, your opponent only needs to make a single mistake for you to get the kill. No one has permanent vision looking backwards and you need to anticipate when the enemy won’t look behind them or flare too slow. One thing I like doing is shooting just as someone bombs, then they tend to be too preoccupied with bombing to look back or flare in time. If people are turning away from terrain they are also not as attentive, try exploiting gaps in attention to kill people with your IR missiles.
ive had moments where the enemies Aim9l ignored several flares
Some shots are simply very difficult to evade due to how the seeker is looking (for example if the missile is parallel to the plane it won’t see flares behind the plane). Other times if you flare too much and go in a straight line you will ‘breadcrumb’ the missile and it will eventually lock back on to you. Generally doing manoeuvres will help in evasion.
Is it normal for me to often get just “Hit”, upon a missile connecting, and a little more rarely critical hits.
This is a major bug in the latest update. All missiles are bugged and they should be much more reliable. Basically hits should be crits and crits should be severe damage. Skyflashes are not amazing, but they should not be that bad either.
so i decided to keep on and try keep my speed
Smart
Much of warthunder air 12.0 is about good target switching.
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Should have stayed as low as possible and went for gun kill. Guy was flying too low for your missiles to work. You on other hand left “safezone” and were immediately awarded with r27r (iirc its radar one, t/et is heat seeking). And even if he didnt launch his missile. Its mig21 which most likely will just outturn you and slam with all aspects. Hence why you should have tried to shred him with guns in head on
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F4 was bad, but you can still got 1/1 KD with it by killing another f4.
Just keep playing and trying and it will get better. Use the ACM mode to not fumble around with the radar.
And get rid of the bombs and take as less fuel as you can, it makes a huge difference.
I tend to be more comftorable with HMS, is there any major difference in them except the ACM’s autolock and HMS’ freecam or whatever you would call it?
Also, I take 80% fuel so I can afford to use the afterburner as much if i need to run away.
Should I take less?
Even better
Not really, if i have it i use HMS the most and only use ACM if i lost sight of the target but know aprox. where he is (mostly in ground RB)
Just see for yourself how much fuel you have left after every game, then you can adjust to your needs.
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After many matches, I decided to put back napalm, as I cant really do anything except pray the enemy gives me a kill by flying above me, which almost never happens.
I tend only to kill planes lower, the same, or .3 br higher than me.
When im not fighting higher tiered vehicles I can actually do something, but it is mostly uptiers, so thats why I’m using napalm, maybe sneak in a base bomb if nobody is a comftorable position for me to attack.
Hey Wtty,
I’ve been struggling a lot like you as I also purchased this plane and I wanted to improve with it.
I’ve been reading throughout the whole post and let me tell you, keep on playing on only missiles in order to improve and once you get that down you can multitask and also destroy bases.
What I’ve been doing in the matches in terms of positioning is going to left or right once you spawn, it depends on the position of the ally team. Once you are far (not much, about 7 km) rejoin them into the 2nd or 3rd row of attack. By doing this, I usually notch any incoming missiles from any f-14 that is coming towards me, this is because you usually encounter one or two on the enemy team each match.
Once you are with your team and found a head-on target you need to try giving the missile a little bit of upwards inclination, you can do this by turning around your aircraft or when launching your missile try to climb up a little. This can get you pretty easy and reliable kills.
I hope you find this useful and if I said any incorrect information, please, feel free to correct me, as I also want to improve on top tier aircraft fights.
Note: I know I’m a low level but this is what I found that is working for me, feel free to give any comments or tips.
Thanks!!
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I’ve been doing this for a bit, but this tends to not work for me in uptiers, because if I face a higher tier jet, im not getting out of that head-on alive, even if I fire first (most of the times the sparrow just zooms past the enemy), or go for guns, the phantom is not getting away from that enemy missile, from my experience atleast. (there are crazy amounts of hornets for some reason even though i thought theres only 4 possible downtiered players?).
Currently I’ve been climbing even if it was an uptier or not, aslong if there was an F14 or 2 on my team, with the idea that the F14’s will keep enemies off the heights and they would be under me, and it has worked for the few games I’ve done it.
It’s been working better than the flying to the side for me as of right now, I’ve actually just played a game where I hit all 5 of my missiles, but 3 of them were just a “Hit”, and only 2 were kills doing this, in a downtier tho, on uptiers I can manage to snag a kill sometimes.
Allthough thank you for your comment.
So a few things here; one- you are firing at a target lower than you and near the ground, so odds are he’s going to multipath your missile away. At that point, it’s not even worth firing a radar missile and probably better to wait for guns.
Two; he fired a radar missile from below you and in front, so he had both a clear picture and a strong radar lock of you. Wit nothing to interfere with the radar lock, even chaff sometimes won’t help, and you are stuck having to try and evade the missile which is difficult to do at this BR.
My honest advice in a situation like this is to get real low and stay real low. You can always pop up for potshots, but it also saves you from getting radar missiles from people below you.
Other than that though, glad to see you taking some of my advice, and glad to hear it’s working out for you. Hopefully you get through the US Air tree relatively quick.
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Thanks on spotting my mistakes, I’ve been alternating between going high and staying low in uptiers and it has been working. I’ve just been having moments like this. (I was lowkey annoyed so next time I saw a lone F-18 I decided to fire 3 sparrows at him, I was RTB’ing obviously.)
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I’m pretty sure I’ve found my way of playing this plane, and the only way to get better from now on is just playing the game.
I’d like to say thanks to those who went out of their way to help and goodluck.
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Unfortunately stuff like this just happens. It’s the way of the game. Other than that glad to hear you’re doing better and having a good time. If you ever need a squad mate or are bored gimme a quick shout in game. Good luck on the grind!
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I’m thinking of getting the M1 KVT and AV8 NA packs with the sales, anyone got advice for them? Is the phantom a better plane to purchase than the AV8?