It’s very bad for 13.0, but it can’t go lower because it has IRCCM missiles. That’s BR compression for you.
It’s arguably the worst 13.0 but the Sea Harrier FA2 tries hard to compete for that place too. Even though it’s an F-16, it’s the block15. The F-15A has a similar or better FM and does everything better since it has radar missiles too and more countermeasures, speed, better radar etc. The gripen A is the closest thing to this F-16A, but it’s just better too… HMD, better radar, more countermeasures, better FM, and does have aim7e2s but almost no one will use them over the aim9m
Having no radar missiles of your own means you cannot defend yourself properly, and you got to be always defensive against anyone attacking you, which means you will easily die to an IRCCM missile, specially the gatewidth ones
Not BVR, I mean denying the enemy the luxury of altitude advantage over you before merging. And at 13.0 matchmaker, there’s plenty of jets that will handle the F-16 in a merge, with altitude/position advantage is even easier.
Not every map works, and multipath is not always reliable, specially when the enemy can just dive on you and spam missiles from high above you without any pressure. Good luck surviving a few R-27ERs from a su27 even when multipathing.
Most players are not flying directly at you because they themselves are afraid of radar missiles. It’s very rare that I encounter somebody who does everything they need to, to prevent me from killing them in the F-16A.
jets yeah, not players, hence why the plane is still fine. It is not “good for 13.0” but it’s still far better than any 12.7 jet and it’s still far and beyond good enough for any reasonably skilled player to play and do at least decent with if not well.
Which one does not allow this strategy? Because I literally do this in 90% of games on all maps
I notch missiles that are high and MP ones that are low, doing this makes MP work 95%+ of the time. MP only doesn’t work reliably on AIM-54/Fakour 90 because of its proxy range and on other ARH that is fired from high altitude
That’s what balancing by player statistics is, which is obviously flawed. And there are some 12.7 that have the advantage over this 13.0 F-16, like the yak141, mirage2k and all the other F-16s. Their FM coupled with their loadout will make the F-16 be at a disadvantage more often than not.
From what you say, you should have incredible results with the Belgian F-16A. Which doesn’t seem to be the case.
I agree… but F-16A wouldn’t move to 12.7 even with pure plane statistic balancing because thats just what compression is causing rn
Don’t agree, I don’t find 141 to be better.
Also don’t find this to be better, but its close in performance. Still, it is worse enough to justify 12.7 whereas the F-16A cannot.
F-16ADF (12.7) isn’t better than F-16A (13.0), this one is a cope. Having two mediocre af sparrows does not overrule having 6 actually pretty damn good AIM-9Ms I have to assume you were referring to this jet.
Do you even know my username to be making this statement? Because… it isn’t the same as my forum name, and I also have decent stats in the F-16A.
Edit: Tbh I forgor I posted my statline in it earlier in this thread lmao, the stats are fine tho so idk what you’re coping about
I said they have the advantage because all of those have radar missiles and strong FMs too, and in the case of the 2k, magic2 to boot which would make the Belgium F-16 easy food from side (or from above) or rear aspect before merging. The F-16ADF has the same FM and with sparrows, the better positioning before the merge. The F-16AJ is just better in a 1v1 engagement against the belgium one, since its a block10 on top of having sparrows.
I don’t know how well you do with other 13.0s, but I have better stats than you with the belgian F-16A but that jet is still garbage for 13.0.
I have slightly better stats than you, and more experience with its competition since I have played more 13.0+ jets, but from the way you speak you sound like you would fare quite well with it, and in my perspective 2 kdr at those ranks means the jet is meh, for me.
I know that jet sucks and doenst deserve to be at the same level as the likes of F-15A, and specially the flankers.
This jet is probably the one that most suffering from BR compression.
The F-16Aj dosent have IRCCM missiles tho unlike belgian one, which imo balances it out again
the belgain f-16 also has the ability to take CM pods which can be really useful
Let me be clear then, having radar missiles does not mean you are better than the F-16A just because it lacks them…
F-16ADF is close in performance obviously, with the F-16ADF trading 9Ms for 2x 7Fs but having to use 4x 9L as backup. That said, I would still rather have the F-16A in any air RB match. It’s just better than having to fallback on 9Ls even if you don’t get sparrows.
Ok, here’s the issue:
Again, I play the F-16A as an aggressive pusher with multipathing as my main defense, using notching only to defeat high altitude launches WHILE ALSO still multipathing while I’m doing it. With this, Magic 2 users do not get killshots because frontal aspect is very flarable for a magic 2. I can then choose to merge with them or not depending on whether I think I’ll win the dogfight, but I usually do because I’m slowing down ahead of time slightly to get into my speed band while the M2K (or any other jet in this case) is still full throttling.
So the point is, I’m not dying to magic 2s often doing this.
Only if I don’t just… multipath his sparrow, which is doable about 99.9% of the time.
Couple things about this, separately from the last post:
Air RB is not a 1v1.
Even in a 1v1, the 16AJ only has a small FM advantage while the F-16A has… AIM-9Ms… which are extremely deadly in comparison to 9L. The F-16AJ here HAS to get a gun kill, NOTHING else will work. The F-16A on the other hand can ABSOLUTELY abuse his 9Ms throughout the fight.
The AJ is also 12.7, and as such should be worse in AirRB efficiency. I also said:
What I was talking about is that in a engagement between both, the AJ would be able to mantain altitude and the Belgium one would need to be defensive all the way to the merge and on top of that, after the merge the AJ has the superior FM, Aim9M are useless in dogfights so those wont make any difference.
Its about the same in my experience. The sparrows give me more consistent results. The aim9m sometimes give me high kill matches If I manage to be unspotted at altitude or flank a oblivious team but other times I just serve as bait for my team to get kills. Its just that with a 12.7 you dont get as many uptiers, and when you do, they are not as bad.
Yeah and then start a dogfight with a clear positional disadvantage against the same FM as yours.
But I am getting much better results in the AJ than the 13.0 Belgium F-16, and you cant say I don’t know how to play it because your results arent better.
Even in downtiers with the F-16A with aim9ms, I’m not getting better games on average than the F-16AJ.
But I don’t want to see the Belgium F-16A downtiered with the current compression. Its a far easier loadout to use for noobs and the jet is a overall a considerable better package than 12.7s, except the yak141
lots of interesting points being made, although i disagree about multipathing, I used to multipath and push agressively too, however i struggled with that strategy and found much better results by going high and notching threats and weaving between players at altitude.
Players pay close attention to their TwS and RWR these days for positioning and general info on where the bad guys are, and turning off your radar really messes up their decision making and allows me to place myself in very nice spots to strike from the side.
I really, really struggled to figure this out and died an enormous amount of times figuring out how to fly the F16A, but once I did it actually became somewhat enjoyable, however i still do think its a mediocre jet, and i do think the F16AM is a better pick because of the extended range sparrows afford you.