Good morning, evening, and night wherever you are.
I’ve been playing since 2018 or so, finally reaching the good 12-13 sweet spot in 3 nations.
7.0-10.0 I have a grand 'ol time, getting around 5-6 kills per game. But For the longest time, I cant barely manage to scratch a kill in 12+ (unless I’m in the F-4S.) I have the F-14A/B, F-15A, F-16A, Su-33, MiG-23M, yet I can only ever manage a kill every other 2-3 games.
I’m genuinely tweaking, and I don’t want to quit this game. I’d love to upload footage if anyone is down to inspect it and help me where I’m failing, but I just need general tips.
A better overview and specifics;
I can manage a kill with Fox3’s/Fox1’s with DL. In the Su-33 with R-27ET’s and IRTracking I can scratch a few kills, but god forbid I’m using SARH or Fox3’s.
My defense isn’t terrible, I would say. Defensive planes I fly defensive, offensive planes I fly decently defensive/aggro.
I just keep going back to 9-10.7 because its just easier to farm kills. But I want to play more modern jets, ya dig?
I also love sim, but same issues. Can’t get SARH/Fox3 kills.
High starting for 3’s, fire off to get them to shoot topdown, then i go low.
If Im limited to SARH’s I go around the furball, pikc off a few, then re-merge. at Mid-low alts.
Be aware that not all planes get this data displayed, and that this data is relative, ie. it assumes both you and your target will keep the current alt, speed and heading. Its also missile dependent.
Basically reason your missiles dont hit is either that they get defeated by CMs, dont have enough G pull, or dont have enough energy.
I used to have the same problem until I realized that you ultimately want to have both alt and speed before you launch, because it gets the missile the neccesary energy to intercept the target.
I used to hug the deck even with EFT and wonder why I get constantly outranged, before I just embraced zapping around at 5km (now 8km with those new contrail alt changes) at 1.5 Mach and dumping missiles that way.
Think my biggest right now is energy and CMR. I’ll view the missile and its nowhere near an enemy. In the F-14A with 2 AIM54A’s for example, Ill be well higher than the nemy team, get locked and fired upon, force myself to fire my two, not connect, dive to the deck and notch, only to still not get a kill.
I’ll try a few games with the F/A-18A, and the Su-33 and get back to you.
Hornet+ Sparrow combo will have some range issues but Su-33 + R-27ER, just sideclimb to 7km and then fly straight to action and never going below mach 1.1 until its the last few stranglers
Dont be afraid to climb at much more steep angle, you will regain speed later. And at those distances, more shallow horizontal turns are perfectly fine as to preserve as much speed as possible.
how did you managed to fire that first 27ER without a hardlock? That couldve been kill if you would have kept him locked but it almost looks like you fired one off without getting a hard lock so the missile went off on IOG.
ET was unfortunately flared.
first launch you aimed at Mirage and fired off R-27ER, then you immidiately switched over to different target that got killed in the meantime. ER followed your radar and did hard turn where it wasted all of its energy.
Second launch was kill, nothing wrong there.
Third launch switched over from enemy to your friendly hornet, you were extremely lucky that it did not connect lol.
Fourth launch you again fired off ER and then turned off the hard lock.
Before I go watch other replays, seeing as you did that three times already, do you know that R-27ER is SARH and requires constant lock?
I appreciate your input for this thread. It seems as I have forgotten ER’s were practically a sparrow.
I kept switching from the f-14 to SU-33 so I guess I kept treating them as such.
Thank you for the movement tips aswell, I don’t typically fly that high unless Im in a MiG-23, which I tread very lightly.
well they are SARHs, datalink is there for mid course correction and IOG is there for cases you lose a lock (ie. your radar gets notched).
Anyway
Flying high and at high speeds gives your missiles extra bit of energy and makes you harder to intercept, with caveat being that if you get jumped from directly below youre prolly done.
27ER launched that way will have extra speed and overall energy so it will have insane time to target, which is what you want. Less time to target = less time to defend.
With SARHs people will get RWR notification that they are being hardlocked and RWR will start screaming bloody murder moment it detects guidance signal.
As long as you have two ERs, you want to fire at around 15km as to give your enemies little to no time to react; 20km if you are both at high alt. When you get more ERs and if you get large maps like Afghanistan, dont be shy to fire off one or two at larger distances against high alt foes.
Dont bother firing at people already notching or about to enter a notch.
Dont fire into a furballs unless youre 100% sure your missile will intercept the target immidiately.
Switch to IRST whenever you want to fire off 27ET or R73 - all the benefits of HMD and hardlocking with none of the drawbacks (like triggering enemy RWR); assuming there are no clouds.
Once you master all of that, you can try to go for DL+IOG trick, which is basically:
Fire off ER at hardlocked target
immidiately let go of the hardlock, track him in TWS instead
missile will fly in IOG+DL mode
once your missile gets within certain range, you hardlock the target again
he should get minimum if any warning hes about to get slamdunked by a missile, but you wont always pull this off due to chaotic nature of the game.
Same can be practically applied to Sparrows minus the stuff about DL and other stuff specific to ERs.
Overall, learned from this thread. I’m managing at least 4 kills a game now with the Su-33.
Still got some kinks to work out both personally and through learning russian toptiers. (USA main)
