Ever since the last update, I find myself completely useless while playing the F14B, and at this point I’m not even sure what I’m even doing wrong.
Every game I play I try different ways of doing stuff, using the Aim54’s, Aim7’s and 9L’s, and no matter what I try to do, everyone seems to overpower me in every sense of the word, trying to use the Aim54’s has gotten me a total of 1 kill in the last 20 games I’ve tried them, not even close to the ratio I used to get before, so I resorted to not even carry them anymore, and use a loadout of Aim7M’s and 9L’s, the problem is, I dont even get to lock onto anyone before getting blasted into the hangar by 3 different missiles at the same time, if I try sneaking from the side, the moment an enemy top tier jet (which is 90% of the people in the game) spots me, I’m dead, no matter how much doppler notching, manouvering or flaring I do, either I’m lucky enough to have a mountain in the middle, or there is absolutely no way to dodge any missile that comes my way, if I try going head on with my allies, the same happens but x3, usually having 2 F15’s and an Su34 launching aim120’s and R77’s my way that I’m not being able to dodge, the only games out of like 60 that I’ve been able to do the slightest thing is when I somehow manage to sneak into a dogfight with multiple planes and manage to get some missiles into someone, in those I’m able to dodge most of the missiles but the problem is 95% of my games I can’t even make it to a dogfight, let alone a head on with anyone, I just get killed from 15km away before my radar even wants to start locking into people.
I’ve resorted to playing my old A10… I do great with it in games, getting 2-4 kills per game consistently… but it’s really taking a toll on my eagerness to play at all… I remember when I got the F14 I was super excited, flying my favourite plane, being able to do so many cool stuff… but lately I’ve just been loosing time and silver lions… my last games net gains have been like -200k silver lions in total… and I just don’t know what to do anymore, even questioning if I’m just absolutely trash and should just stop playing overall…
Try running chaff in your intenral CMs and then whenever you dump CMs, drop dozens more than you do in any other aircraft. BOL chaff is incredibly weak and ineffective at the moment.
After that, stick low and fast, stick to the edge of the map, wait for the furball to happen and then blast in to attack people who are distracted, stick fast and low.
If you are more interested in 1 on 1 fights, check out air sim. You’ll have lobbies where you arent fighting the top tier stuff all the time and can actually use the F-14B to its strengths
I already dump everything when I flare, I have a 50/50 mixture of flares and chaff, and use a key and the scroll wheel of the mouse to dump like 10 per second, but it pretty much does the exact same thing as not flaring at all… and I’ve been wanting to play on SIM, but the controls are… awful to say the least… I have 3 different joysticks/yokes, and messed around with the settings for a long time, I still can’t get it to work in a comfortable way… it’s all extremely wiggly and messy, any tips on how to make it better…?
Top of the control settings in the full controls is a setting called SAS mode.
Set a keybind for that and then enter test flight/match. Press that keybind and it will change to SAS: damping at the bottom of your screen. Try flying with that, might help a lot
kept trying to stay low and fast… but the whole game has been notching missile after missile, to finally get a chance to see anyone below 10km away, just to get outpowered by IRCCM missiles or aim120’s, and my options are… launch a missile that’s gonna miss 100% of the time and die, or dodge their missiles, and recieve a second one or outturned and killed with cannon… so at the moment I’m still clueless as to what to do with 10.3 equipment against 13.7 jets…
For uptiers, you are going to be stuck in a support role.
You can fire your aim54s outside of aim120 range. After that, keep some distance and look for distracted enemies. Dive at them and use the aim7 or aim9, depends on the situation.
Another option is to save a couple aim54s and use them on planes that are trying to disengage and/or head back to base. Or use them on those that are taking off.