How’s the Tornado F3? I just unlocked and it seems really promising for 12.0, considering talismaning it instead of buying the Bison when the sales go live.
Soild aircraft. The stockgrind is pretty brutal. You are a SARH missile truck and you dont get any until T3 and the Skyflash DFs are a bit meh for the BR, but the Skyflash SuperTEMPs are excellent for that BR when you get them unlocked but unlike a lot of aircraft, you cant bomb your way to spaded. So bare that in mind and stick with it.
After that, its a fun aircraft, but does require good situational awarness and the right tactics, like being a little more defensive.
Only major weaknesses at the moment are:
- You will struggle in conventional dogfights against most you face, but keep your speed up and avoid direct engagements like this and you’ll be fine. When you get more confident and you can make it work in a dogfight in a limited capacity.
- CMs are mostly BOL and BOL is artifiically nerfed at the moment. Hopefully it will be fixed sooner rather than later, but until then, you’ll need to deploy more CMs that you normally would in all situations, which is fine, you have plenty, but still bare it in mind (hopefully we can get Phimat pods soon to massively bolster our CM count as well)
- Uptiers… You shouldnt be seeing let alone fighting most of what you see at 13.0, but there isnt much you can do about this until they decompress the BRs and it isnt alone in that regard. So if you are seeing 13.0 ARH slingers, I would recommend playing a little extra defensively.
But so long as you leverage the excellent radar and very good missile payload for the BR, you will do just fine. In the future, it should also have an outstanding defensive suite (352 large calibre flares* and 432 large calibre chaff would be its theoretical max CM payload) , which will be more than enough to compensate for the FM issues. You’d also be surprised by the number of people still reliant on Multipathing for defending against an SARH. So I strongly advice getting use to climbing to about 10k ft (when you have the Skyflash STs unlocked) and leveraging your radar/SARH onto targets that are defending poorly. Just note, the Tornados being originally designed as a low level interdictor dont perticuarly like higher alts. 10k feels fine, but as you go higher than that, you really start to feel the sluggishness of it
In ASB, it is an aircraft I rather thoroughly enjoy, and does extremely well. In ARB, you are a little at the mercy of the matchmaker, but in any match that isnt a full uptier, it does rather well these days (and even then. I have a few F-15A kills in the F3)
I personally went the route of putting a talisman on the Tonka Gr1 and later the GR4. But that’s just because I prefer mud moving. But would be very tempting to put a talisman on the F3 in the future if it wasn’t for the fact that I largely have the entire tree already grinded.
If they ever added a premium F3… That would be very tempting purely for printing SLs in SB
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How are the super temps compared to AIM 7F or 7P performance wise? Just to get an idea of how far away I can fire them when at high speed and at high altitude. I’m used to the skyflash from the FGR2 and I think they are pretty good in headons.
Also how does SRC PD HDN radar mode compare to SRC PDV HDN? I probably should be using the former right?
I hope I can get the missiles before the next 11.0-12.0 bracket in SB.
Also, how’s the Tornado at 13.0? Is it better or worse than the 13.0 Harrier?
Regarding premium Tornado, I’m eyeing the German one even if I already have the whole tree unlocked during the sales for SB as well, I really the Tornados but haven’t had one since today.
Weaker than 7Ps, as they don’t have the IOG or DL…but on par to Aim-7Fs. A little weaker at short ranges but a bit stronger at longer ranges
I typically fire the SuperTEMPs around 15-20km. But if I can wait till the target is closer I will. The RWR is really good, so you can tell what is going on.
On the right hand side of the radar screen is a ranging scale. There are 2 small lines and 1 long line. The top most short line is max range for the missile, the bottom one is the min range and the long line is the relative distance the target is at. So as long as the long line is between those marks the missile can hit. But the closer to the bottom line the better (it should give LSZ or launch success zone for the STs which is the range in which the target can’t kinematically defeat the missiles but this has yet to be modeled, but you’ll see this on the 9Ls and is depicted by a box on this ranging scale) so I’d aim to fire in the bottom half to third of that scale and you should have reasonably good success with wise to the target being in range, but that isn’t to say you can’t get kills with the target further away. You’ll get the feel for it
I tend to just use TWS most of the time and the ACM modes are very good too…
It is better than the SHar thanks to having a much better weapons load, but the aforementioned CM issues are even more brutal (much like they are on the FA2) and the FM does struggle with getting into notches if you aren’t careful.
Between the 2, I prefer the 12.0 one but the 13.0 is playable. I need to try it out in the new 13.3 bracket in SB at some point. Haven’t done that yet
It’s a solid ground attacker and being 11.3 is very nice. I’m working down the Italian tree for their equivalent that’s free in the TT.
The Gr1 has some pretty major issues like being 11.7 and having weaker engines for “reasons” but the GR4 surprisingly fun despite being 12.3
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Anyone else experiences this issue where you can’t use chaff in the F3? I can in a test flight but not in a match. I think it also has some shenanignas like the MiG 21 in which the first loadout slot can’t bring flares for some reason even if you equip the flares pod.
In the past you might need to delete your custom load out.
Remake it and you should have CMs back.
Whenever you unlock additional CMs via a mod, any custom loadouts made prior can randomly stop working.
Delete the loadout
Remake the loadout
Restart your game
Should fix any issues
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Only played the F3 Early in RB as of now, just got the SuperTemps but I’m having a blast, it’s really amazing at 12.0 and I can do decent in it in uptiers too. Is it any fun in the current 12.0-13.0 SB bracket or should I wait till at least 11.7-12.7 to try it out?
You can try it, but I found even the 11.7-12.7 bracket to be a chore, Mig-29s are extremely hard to fight in a 1v1 in the F3. let alone fighting AMRAAM slingers like the F4F ICE or even the Viggen DIs at 13.0
I use to only play it in the 11.0-12.0 bracket, but rather glad we now also have the 11.3-12.3 bracket. We’ve doubled the number of good Brackets for it.
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