But that IS the case with jets. As a jet you can keep building up energy even at higher speeds (in a shallow climb), unlike something that has no thrust at higher speed like a Zero.
At a certain point, surplus energy becomes unusable. Imagine two opposing F-84Gs flying at top speed, one of them 3km above the other. How is the higher F-84G going to use it’s energy surplus offensively? It can’t, because air resistance and structural limits will prevent usage of that energy, and going faster than your opponent will harm your turn circle, making reversals a threat for yourself.
With that, if it wants to do any kind of meaningful action, it’ll have to take risk and give up it’s speed safety net.
I know they’re always going to be faster than me, whether they’re below or above me, so it doesn’t matter whether they’re overwhelmingly above me or not. Their real strength comes from baiting for others, or collecting bait themselves, in a low risk manner. The airspawn merely changes when they see their opponents. Not to discredit the effect of slightly reducing the enemy team’s energy state by distracting them during the initial climb, that’s always beneficial to your own team.
Unless you’ve equalized the energy, the F-84G still has the surplus over you and you’re still in the deficit. Dodging one strafe isn’t enough to do this if you started in the deficit.
Yes and this is at much higher altitudes than what the F-84G utilizes early game with its energy advantage.
This example doesn’t matter because it isn’t reflective of reality and how the matches actually play out. Again, you start at an energy advantage in the F-84G. A massive one. The entire point is to utilize this energy advantage to make early game plays when the opponents physically cannot have already equalized out to you. They aren’t going top speed at sea level. They are climbing at whatever speed or just starting to gain their level flight speed when you swoop in with the F-84G. You then press the advantage and BnZ them to death with the advantage so long as you don’t get hit by a separate target.
It can be very influential at match start, because the combination of air spawn and speed gives it a choice between ground pounding, taking out attackers/bombers, or focusing on fighters. If you maintain speed and altitude, you can pass some of those opportunities on to your team as you force enemies to react to you.
I’ve seen well flown F-84G have some awesome matches… both for and against my team. I’ve also seen F-84G that want to turn fight… and that doesn’t usually end well for them.
The most important thing for the F-84G is to resist temptation.
playing f-84 needs to let go of the desire for kills and focus on using speed to repeatedly hit and run.