How to play Hunters

Machinery of War Discussion Aircraft
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1

Decited to play AirRB with a friend, from Spitfire mk Vb (BR 3.7) to top tier (Currently at Hunter FGA.9 BR 9.3)
Playd mainly Spitfires, really good aircraft exceptionally Mk.22, I really love that one. However jets were disappointing.
But after I started playing Hunter F.1 It’s not really good, but I don’t have that much time on it
However; Hunter FGA.9
It dosn’t have speed at it’s BR, lots of supersonics, So you can’t fight them with speed
And If you find a subsonic plane you are not really that much faster than other planes
It It flies like a brick at low and high speeds, can fly at it’s best at around 850km/h, So you can’t really dogfight
Heard that it’s good at boom and zoom, Just fake
So you drop on enemy and hope that the enemy won’t turn (won’t happed 8/10 times), remember can’t turn at high speeds, so you will overshoot. Won’t be a problem for other aircraft.
But Hunter won’t turn on those speeds and has no flares, so if enemy shoots Fox2 - You are dead
If he is supersonic then he will catch up to you and shoot you with cannons, can’t do evasive maneuvers and force an overshoot will not help since now you are below best speed to turn so - You are dead
If someone is on your six 7/10 times You will die, the other 3 are subsonics that you are Barely outrunning
Only time when I got kills was if:

  1. Enemy had ULTRA Tunnel vision (Not joking All they have to do was to Turn to any direction)
  2. Did not know I was behind him
  3. Dude went "I am gonna slowly turn and hope he will miss this Eazy kill
  4. Yea there is Hunter on my six and I am slow…CLIMB (edit; This can be a counter since you can’t turn at low and high speeds)
  5. Head on (Hope that jet infront doen’t have SARH missiles)
  6. EF-111 moment

Only the ADENs are good and the Aim-9E is somewhat usefull.
I have K/D of 2 and it feels awful to even have kills with this.
For a fighter with those nice big wings I would guess It has really good maneuverability but no, I got shot down by Yak-28 and 38, same for F4, F-104/106
How am I supposed to play this, can’t dogfight, can’t boom and zoom (mostly), am I gonna have to bomb bases and hope that any supersonic will not follow me?

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2

The hunter is good for dogfights. It doesn’t have the best turn rate, but it has a lot of energy retention.
For the most part it’s a victim of compression. The F6 is decent because of the SRAAMS, and the FGA9 has decent range with the 9E.
With both you can use the rockets for flares, and because of the non afterburning engine this can work quite often. And most radar missiles at this BR are fairly easy to dodge because of their poor range or pull.

But definitely don’t go base bombing in a hunter. They are too slow, and have very limited ground ordinance, which will only make your air to air performance worse.

3

GB props - great
GB jets- bypass the lot until TT. Sry but its just that bad

4

Compression makes the F1, FGA9 and F6 quite a chore to play.

I dont play them much these days for that exact reason, but the only advice I can give is this.

Run your AAMs with as many RP-3s as you can alongside them. They are your flares.

Retain your energy, you accelerate slowly but are actually quite capable at higher speed.

Aim-9Es ive never clicked with, but look for something distracted or slow, and they’ll work fine.

5

Thats not entirely fair, there are some really fun diamonds in the rough, The biggest issue imo for most of them is just compression.

But the only Rank 6 that I actually consider “bad” is the Javelin. Because its really over BRed.

At Rank 7 the Phantoms are outclased because of their weapons fit, and the Buc S2B, Jag and Hawks are just victims of ARB being bad for ground attackers. The rest are fine, bar some issues with compression

Rank 8, most are fine, again though, just compression or the long overdue harrier buff and/or BOL buffs.

6

Theres nothing competative.
Everything and i mean the lot is over BR’d
Others are broken like the swift
Best version of GB jet is always in another tree.

Maybe i was a little harsh. Tornado 12.0 is fun. The rest though- no bueno

7

I have quite a lot of fun with aircraft like the Jaguar GR1, Lightning F6, All the Tonkas and the most of the Harriers in ARB. In ASB ground attackers like the Buc S2, S2B, GR1A, etc are good fun.

I think the vehicles themselves are mostly fine.

Its just either compression or the fact that ARB is just poor gamemode for mud movers, and we have a LOT of mud movers

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8

image

I have done my share of Rhoedisa larp with the hunter, and I can with some certainty say this plane is wonderful. It is a plane that needs patience. It’s like a venomous snake, because most of your game is waiting for the right opportunity to strike and then delivering a swift strike. The plane can feel like a brick, but the thing is that it turns good enough and maintains the speed while in turns. This lets you feign most planes into a DF and then run away after they follow you into a vertical turn.

The thing can outrun planes, even after burning ones, and it’s usually achieved by what I described above. Those (barely super-sonic) trans-sonic airframes often have terrible turn, and the purely supersonic ones like a MiG-21 will bleed all of it’s speed trying to follow you in maneuvers. Sub-sonic planes you can run away from no matter what. Which is why the thing is 9.3 – because in a downtier this thing is basically untouchable if you don’t make mistakes.

And the thing can turn, even at high speeds. Which is it’s main gimmick, that being it really doesn’t compress at all. It rolls good too.

The real trick is to play it an active boom-and-zoom. You need good gunnery, so I recommend learning how convergences can help you lead on targets. I run 100m with vertical targeting on that thing. In down-tiers you can be more aggressive, but most of your kills are gonna be on people distracted. I don’t use makeshift flares myself. Save your AIM-9Es for targets that you know can outrun you/catch you, or other priority targets that are going slow like pesky Arietes. In general, you need target prioritization with this plane. You also need to help your team, because you become increasingly ineffective as your team loses players – you can’t really do much when the entire enemy team is on your six.

This plane also is one where you need to learn soft pulling of the elevator, you need wide turns in dogfights to make most of your retention, so learn elevator tapping.

Also run only about 9m of fuel, that what I do and it’s more than enough. The flight performance degrades heavily the heavier you are. Also, remember that you have a very powerful airbreak, this combined with the good rolling makes forcing scissor overshoots a potent tactic. Along with making sure you don’t overshoot once you’re on someone’s six.

Ultimately, this is one of those planes that requires lot of knowledge about what you’re facing, positioning, good gunnery, understanding of your own airframe’s intricacies and general energy management context.

The TLDR really just is position yourself well, don’t get into prolonged DFs unless it’s late game, and remember that speed is your friend. Learn target prioritization, and don’t stick in furballs, only make that one or two passes. Headons also work once youre confident with the ADENs. They hit very hard. It’s honestly similar to the Fw190 in many ways, because the plane relies on that sort of energy fighting for most of it’s gameplay.

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9

I started WT , went against all advice and played with GB- quit ground after days of bounced shells… made it to 10.7 jaguar and actually said to my friend im done.

Think the conversation went if not in a mig you are getting slapped. He is rated 98 or something on SS and had nothing in the GB tree he could.recomend me to use lol. He talked me into buying the J7D and went from 0.5 KD to well over 1.0

Thats how bad/ full of cope GB really is. Im sure it will of ended plenty of peoples war thinder careers

10

The lightning is good