How to play F-4s?

[Morvran]

You will find a notable learning curve by skipping from rank 5 to rank 8 combat. its very different.

My advice, run a few bombs (enough for 1x base kill) and edge skirt to a base for 1x base kill, F4S are fast enough to get this fairly reliably before then turning back into the fight, until you get more confident with jet based combat, I would stick with the Aim-7F Sparrows as your main weapon, these are SARH missiles, meaning you need to lock onto a target with your radar and maintain the lock throughout the launch, do note if the target is too low, then the missile will likely be defeated by “multipathing” and the missile will crash into the ground. Go for targets that are distracted in a fight and engage them. Do note that locking onto them with your radar will light up their RWR so they will have warning. Alternatively, you could use the Aim-9Hs which are rear-aspect IR Missiles to engage targets to, again, I would aim for people distracted.

Radar:

You have 2 radar modes. SRC and SRC PDV HDN.

SRC is good for targets in most aspects but only at higher altitudes and will struggle with targets near the ground, the other mode (for the sake of ease, i will refer to as PDV) is a mode that only works when the target is flying directly towards you, but will work at any alt.

You also have ACM mode which just locks onto anything directly infront of the nose, very handy for a rapid lock and then HMS mode which is ACM but you can control.

On the right hand side of the radar panel, when you lock onto a target and have a missle selected, you will see 3 lines, 2 short 1 long. those are a range indicator, the top small line is the max range of the missile, the bottom small line is the min range of the missile and the long line is the current range, I would advice Against firing near the top of that window, but if you aim for the bottom third or so, you can be reasonably sure it will hit unless the missile is defeated

Maintain high speed as best you can, and avoid unncessary dogfights, though the F4S is one of the better F4s for dogfighting in.

Do also be careful if you get uptiered, at 12.0, you can see 13.0 aircraft that are slinging ARH missiles, this is why I would advice sticking much lower to the ground and terrain mask wherever possible

[Caernarvon02]

Gonna be honest youre going to be nothing but free kills to most enemies in a phantom

[Sternlos]

only bring enough napalm to kill a single base, no more. Napalm because it takes less weight, so you are faster, and gaijin stealth nerfed bombers like 5 years ago and still 99.99999% of people don’t know that the more bombs/rockets you bring the less points, RP, SL you get per thing destroyed significantly. If you bring for instance enough napalm to kill 2 bases you will get nearly half the RP/SL per base, so if you only get 1 base, which will be the case more often than not you get totally boned when bringing enough for 2, god forbid enough for 3-4.

Also don’t fall into the trap of base bombing, it will be terrible for you later on because you won’t be getting better at the game. Take enough napalm for 1 base, go left with your team, see if you can’t snag one of the left bases, if you can’t, no big deal just drop you bombs. Then try to actually learn how to fight.

[bartok1023]

Thanks very much for your help. I will try to use radar appropriately, as you said

[bartok1023]

I noticed this (:

[bartok1023]

I didn’t know about that. Thanks for your help

[bartok1023]

But I have one more question. Is climbing to 6km and attacking from above by diving and then climbing back up to 6km effective against other jets?

[Morvran]

It might be.

But. Aim-7Fs don’t have the greatest performance and the radar on the F-4S isn’t that great. You also may face far superior aircraft in BVR, even a few at the same BR like the Tornado F3. Climbing high makes you a clear target for everyone else’s BVR missiles and you might be totally outsticked.

Late game, when it’s safer to climb up, then gaining that energy advantage can be helpful, but that takes time to know when it’s safer to climb

[Sternlos]

Climbing takes a lot of skill/knowledge to pull off. If you are high up you are going to make yourself an easy target because everyone can see you on radar. You don’t want to climb unless you know what type of match you are in (uptier/downtier) and that your plane has a good advantage in terms of radar/radar missiles. For instance at 12.0 in the F4S you can see jets with R27R like mig29/yak141 which will absolutely beat you every time. In a downtier however even if 12.3 is the highest if you know what you are doing you can be competitive up there with sparrows. But you need so much knowledge about how to work the radar, what a good launch is in terms of range etc. how to defend against them that I’d say it will probably be a very VERY long time before you should bother climbing.

Staying low to the ground keeps you out of radar scopes, stay low left keeps you together with your team, and gives you the highest chance to get to a base first. Again remember don’t just rely on base bombing or you will never get better. Watch some good players play F4S on youtube, take note of what they are doing and try to emulate that. Read up on sparrows and how/when to use them, learn how to notch/chaff and how multipath works. Then the rest is just trial and error, learning from dying over and over again. It’s going to be a while before you feel confident.

You can also go into replays from your last match you died in, see what the guy did to kill you, figure out what you did wrong, and learn from that. You can also see how you missile launches failed to hit, and glean some info from that. If you don’t know what you did wrong after all that, you can clip it and upload it here or where ever and people will be able to tell you exactly what you were doing wrong in that situation.

[bartok1023]

Do you think it will take a long time before I can learn to play F-4s well? Of course, I have videos of the game, but I recorded arcade battles, not realistic ones. If you want, I can send them to you.

[Sternlos]

Probably a few weeks of playing tbh, you’ll get better along the way. If you upload, do clips, you’ll get 10x more people willing to help if they just have to watch 30 seconds to a minute instead of going through an entire game. Just post them here, no need to DM anyone.

[bartok1023]

file:///C:/Users/Komp/Desktop/Arcade%20battle%20F-4s.mp4

If anyone would like to see the whole movie, I will also send the link below

Arcade Battle F 4s Phantom II

Attention. The films show one of the very few successful arcade battles, not realistic ones, because I had re-used them for F-4s, so I used them

[bartok1023]

If anything, the video is not intended to advertise my YouTube channel or anything, I just wanted to upload the video, but I have it ready for YT.

[bartok1023]

I don’t know if you noticed, but I was very lucky in these films and miraculously avoided death several times

[soymilkman]

Gonna go against the advice of base bombing. Maximize your good positioning and maximize getting the early game advantage. Only take air-to-air, and focus on your radar missiles. I would personally take 5. Its the strongest tool the F-4S has. 20km in a headon is a fairly safe launch range, its hard to dodge. Im no expert, but just playing it more and more and getting a feel for the Phantom will help you the most. Phantom can dogfight but you have to be careful, losing your speed is death.

[bartok1023]

Thank you for your advice. After everything I learned about radars and base bombing, my performance changed a lot within 2 hours of play. Especially thanks to the explanation of radar modes. My current record in RB: 4 plane destructions. 2 bot units destroyed. 1 base destroyed. Here’s the average score per battle: planes destroyed: 1-2 per battle.
In the attached photo, the record is in AB, not RB, because I forgot to take a screenshot of RB

[bartok1023]

But I still can’t correctly choose targets to destroy in order to destroy as many planes as possible in one battle. That’s why it’s usually 1-2 planes per battle. Is it better to destroy individual planes that are not attacked by anyone or those that attack allies or are under attack?

[AXCHNEER]

Side climb (flying high and staying away from the clusterfuck) and use your sparrows for close-mid ranged targets once some people dies so theres some space to stay alive and your enemies get distracted. Bind a key for BVR/WVR/HMS modes and a key for locking so you can use your radar while maneuvering. Also bind a key to switch targets but you can just use your mouse wheel to select a radar target as well. You can also take 2 napalms (for the F-4S, they are lighter and has the highest reward multiplier to destroy a base).

Pay attention to your RWR. “?” is either an SPAA, a SAM, a radar range finder or a PD A2A radar. “MID” is probably a Mirage F1 or a NATO aircraft with pulse radar. “HI” is either a MiG-21 or a MiG-23. You will NOT get a launch warning from a “?” and if you see a constant “?” on your RWR for more than 3 seconds it is probably a CW signal from a PD set or an ARH missile. Immediately go notching in this case. And remember, if the enemy doesn’t have a “look-up” mode in his radar (aircrafts such as MiG-29, Su-27, F-15A doesn’t have a “look-up” mode) notching will be enough to break a lock. But if they do, release chaff while notching (that doesn’t mean you should spam it unless you are in the range of sidelobes). You can easily survive a sparrow for breaking a lock for 2-3 seconds but with R-27R/ER you will have to be more carefull because they can require you back unlike sparrows.

Against MiG-23s, just fly higher and pop 1 chaff when he is about to shoot. Try to avoid sidelobes while doing so or the funny CW will get you. They will probably fly low due to MTI limitations. Against an F-16 or a MiG-29 use your only advantage, the amount of your radar missiles. They only have 2 but you can get up to 6. Launching earlier or just launching another one once they are close enough and decide to recommit will hurt your enemy more than it hurts you. And against enemies like F-14, F-15 or Su-27, good luck. They are superior to you in every way and there is no actual way to defeat them other than notching %90 of the time and trading in a head-on after they get close enough. You may have a change against F-14 due to their ARH missiles lacking a “look-up” mode and you may actually get close enough to fire a sparrow without turning into a red text for your enemy.

[markimash]

@bartok1023

Is it better to destroy individual planes that are not attacked by anyone or those that attack allies or are under attack?

It depends. Most important thing to avoid putting yourself in a bad spot.

Enemies engaging in turn fights will be very risky for radar missile due to the struggle of keeping a lock on planes not going head on with you.

Best targets are those that are flying in your direction but dont notice you. Help out teammates when possible but dont risk getting caught up in a furball.

[bartok1023]

Thank you for your advice