Specifically how do you approach positioning in these matches? There is a lot of guides out there for things like dogfighting, defensive flying, aiming etc. and a lot of these things are easy to see mistakes and intuit what you need to do to improve but I am a bit lost in how to actually position or set yourself up properly.
Right now im playing the mirage IIIS and getting absolutely rinsed in this thing. I watch videos and I see people playing it but they always seem to be in situations where they have someone low energy and even me with terrible aim can end up landing these shots. So my problem is obviously how to get into these situations, but I am a bit lost here.
Generally is playing at low altitudes a bad thing? Should I always have some to work with? Should I just be climbing to like 3km, or just below contrail etc. why? And at these BR’s should I never be taking any fight or turning or losing energy if there is more than 1 enemy player nearby? Am I just limited to basically BnZ and running away in these cases?
Like I can imagine a scenario in my head where I climb to 3k, go left, do a 180 and dive to try to pick off a base bomber, but now there is a mig21 bis on my six 5km away, and eventually if he really wants can run me down. If there is a single non subsonic enemy with him if I try to reverse him and dogfight im 3rd partied by the second, and in this case my only hope is airfield AA or am I just boned in this situation where someone faster decides to chase me down and there is a 3rd party with him? I’m not sure how to avoid situations like this.
Also if I play like this, these matches end so fast that I feel like if you don’t have impact early or be aggressive you end up in 1 of 2 situations. 1 being that your team dies, and now you are getting run down by multiple players and any hopes of a 1v1 or finding easy low energy targets is null, or the other team falls apart and you are just chasing down the few kill left (you are now fighting your team instead of the enemy basically).
So how exactly do you approach these matches in terms of where to fly, when to engage, when not to, how high to climb etc.
It depends a lot on the plane.
Flight performance from 9.0 - 11.3 has some of the largest variety of any point in the game. You have everything from subsonic planes to the fastest in the game. Planes which can barely turn compared to dedicated turn fighters. Some planes have CMs and some don’t. Afterburners aren’t universal. Weapons range from Aim-9Bs to Aim-9Ls
So, specifically, what planes are you playing?
mirage IIIS, mig19S, swiss hunters. Maybe I’ll try the swiss F5, and some 10.3 mig 21 later. Right now though just working on the mirage.
Think I got most of the basics down or at least I am conscious of the mistakes I make there and can improve naturally (things like aim, offensive/defensive missile use, dogfighting, and situational awareness), but I just need to learn how to position and put myself in good engagements mostly, I’m pretty sure thats what is causing me the most grief right now, just constantly ending up in bad posistions.
Okay, so, uh, dunno how to play Hunters. But for the rest, you really need to focus on energy retention. Both F-5s and MiG-21s are much better if you hold some speed. F-5s have much better engine power, and MiG-21s turn much better. For the Mirage you need to watch your speed not for the performance you get from it, but because of how easily it, as a full delta wing, bleeds it.
While you do want to keep energy, yes. With these afterburning jets you do have enough power where you aren’t limited to a strict BnZ playstyle like with props. You can get into a turn fight with people. But you want to keep it as short as possible to retain energy. Basically fight for a few turns, but if your energy drops too low, know who you can run away from. Being defensive bleeds more energy, so you’ll have a headstart over them, so as long as they aren’t faster/have better mid speed accel then you you can safely extend away a lot of the time.
Basically fight, but don’t become over dedicated to a fight.
Having good altitude at the start does help retain energy, but in an uptier you wanna be careful about it due to radar missiles.
Also, if you have someone on your six 5km away, yeah you wanna just turn into them at that point if you can’t run towards your team. Your planes should be manueverable enough to get guns on them in that range.
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Mirage III. Use the booster and climb at 20° full afterburner to about 5-6km and use the radar missiles on anyone up there. Then dive down and boom and zoom. Don’t get into long dogfights unless it’s the only guy remaining.
Finally got the falcos, getting at least a kill a game now. So can you not notch regular search radars? Don’t have chaff yet lol.
What the hell do you mean you got falcos but not chaff???
Countermeasures is the first thing you get.
You get flares for free now, figured I didn’t need em lol. Def do up here doing bvr tho. So SRC mode radars don’t care about notching?
I think they wouldn’t but, seems weird you can defeat modern missiles without chaff but not these. Maybe IOG is more reliable than SRC for those situations?
Yeah believe you me. You need em. Only for the start though. What radar missiles are you having issues with facing?
Not really having trouble, only died to a j8b so far w/ Aspide-1A. Tried to notch without chaff no luck.
Yeah I have no experience countering those as I mainly play the mirage IIIC at 10.0 and cannot even face the j8. But yeah just get chaff for that. Pretty much any other radar missile can just be kinematically defeated.
I guess my problem now is I climb do some BVR then if my team is losing hard im just sitting at like 3-5km and planes seem to have no trouble chasing me down and im just stuck in an endless loop of defending against 2-3 guys.
I killed someone with a falco, dodge a headon with a mirage IIIC while we are both going pretty much mach 1, he does a full 180 for me and somehow catches up to me within like 15 seconds and things just go south from there because I either have to bleed speed to force an overshoot which lets the other guys catch up, or I just let him sit on my tail and die. Not sure how much mods matter, but I don’t really get how he was able to do that to me I was like 100% sure I’d be able to outrun him, unless the mirage IIIC just has insane performance compared to me in the IIIS without mods to be able to cut into me like that without me breaking course.
Watching the replay we are both at ~1100 km, I do a roll and drop to 800km and go straight, he goes into an elongated 180 dive then swoops back up and never drops below 1000 till he noses up, I wasn’t even aware you could do that lol. I guess im bleeding to much speed rolling like that but I really didn’t want to take the headon. was focused on someone else.
Only thing I can think of was I should have at least shot at him to make him bleed speed but im not super confident in headons like that so I’d rather dodge them, usually just ends up with me dying or trading with the other guy.
I think the IIIS can lose speed faster because the canards let you turn sharper.
Ya ive been managing my speed/turns better and thats been helping tremoundously, not use to playing something that can go 1200-400 kmph in a couple second in a hard turn. Sure makes landing easy though.
Mig21 bis, and phantoms seem to be my issue now that I have this thing modded out. They can run me down eventually, and most cases this happens with 3rd parties in tow so I get to a point where I have to bleed energy to not die and then end up in a hopeless 1vX situation. Flares dropping down also means i have to turn or pull up and bleed to dodge missiles and cant dive to do so which is kinda a bummer in these tail chases.
Yeah if you get singled out you are screwed. If you see your team being demolished just go land and j out. Especially in an uptier.
Would you be up for a couple mirage III squad battles later roday?
Sure just send me a DM but i’ll be micless today so Id rather after today if you are planning on using voice chat. I play late night NA mostly after 8/9pm central time.
Ah damn that’s like 3-4 in the morning for me •́ ‿ ,•̀
No worries, thanks for the help. I was 2-8 and now im 57-40, was rough stock with just aim9e and severe skill issue at the start lol. This plane taught me a lot. Might try the swiss F5 next, wasn’t going to but I noticed it gets the radar gun sight so thats gonna help me a ton, don’t think any other F5 gets that?
No idea. I only have the norwegian F5