I just had a couple of jet tips if anyone was interested, I'll post a link at the end to a couple of links of other jet related guides I've posted. I wont really get into bombing, since I personally think It should be your last objective when flying a fighter, everything I write here and elsewhere is tailored for the fighter, I dont see myself as an effective bomber pilot whatsoever so please keep that in mind before asking me anthing bomber related. now that's out of the way... enjoy
1.
First things first, make sure you have your geometry set to as high as it will go as well as viewdistance, and second youll need a flight stick with a twist handle... period... if you cant establish this, I highly recommend you resolve your situation so you can have this set up or you continue ground pounding. When in game always fly medic, going medic is essential for survivability and spotting where your teammates have died, unless you have a very specific reason, always fly medic. also, set your sensitivity for your jet controls to 10 as well as your yaw and pitch, there should be 3 settings one after the other in the control menu.
2.
Prioritize your targets BEFORE YOU GO UP!!! what are you up there for? what is your goal of being up in the air? Your tactical priorities should be as follows with very minimal change. JETS, aa, helos, armor/vehicles. I wanted to also add neutral flags to the priority, as the fastest moving object in the game, you are the best react force to any flag taking on the map, when a flag goes neutral look at your map, if no freindly dots are there, it means bad guys are there waiting in the open for a flag to go up, bomb the hell out of them fast, this will mess up the best squads even and enable your team to maintain a ticket bleed on the enemy, you need to assess the best time to do this, if your not engaged with another jet, you really have no excuse for not doing this, this should be what your bombs are primarily saved for. as for vehicles, you can litteraly force the enemy to come in on foot, all vehicles have a targeting box around them, this is what you use your guns for, dont bomb unless you have to like they are close to getting a flag and you dont have time to set up, bombs should be saved for that peice of armor that is almost half way between his flag and your flag, let him work and drive all that way for nothing, then when hes almost there, bomb him. it's demoralizing and frustrating, people dont play well when they are frustrated. keep in mind, when you start intercepting a route of travel between two flags (works awsome on wake) stick to that route, if the enemy has a second way in, lets take wake for example, if I was strafing all cars coming into airfield from the north as china, and lets say the us capped the south tip, I would tell my wingman, "hey, start strafing cars and intercepting all vehicles from that flag, ill keep pounding this flag". doing this FORCES the enemy to come in on foot, make sure you kill the enemy jets, but you should have a good 45 second window in between jet kill to maintain your
3.
youll need a mic, if you cant talk to your wingman, your just two lone wolfs, two decent f-35 pilots can easily Gang up taking turns, and take out one good j-10 pilot, and always be in a designated air squad... a good commander will realize your better than arty, and if you do your job right will constantly be tasking you with mop up operations on straglers. also there is a command the commander can give to jets it sound like "attack here" youll see a sword pop up on your hud, if he gives that order on your attack run you can litterally strafe individual infantry in the water, my old designated clan commander ||3rb||thunderbolt used me for this alot. THE COMMANDER NEEDS TO SPOT VERY ACURATELY, where he spots is where you shoot, give him about 5 or 6 tries, if he cant get it down, your going to have to strafe them at the last second visually.
4.
the first skill you need is how to take down a jet with a jet, is each jet is different, so different in fact that if you fly an F-18 the way you fly an F-35 you will get pwned, like wise if you fly a Mig the same way you fly a J-10 you will get pwned. I will go into some very basic info about the individual jets so you know what to emphasize and what to minimize as far as strengths and weaknesses respectivly. I will not give you meaningless fluff number like wingspan, or other technical crap, only what is in BF2 and what actually matters to proloning and facilitating success as a fighter pilot in short... No BS. I will emphasize a section at the end of this post just for the F-35. The F-35 is in my mind the second best jet in this game after the J-10 air to air wise, overall the F-35 is my preffered jet, dont believe me? try shooting me down when I'm in an F-35, its not as easy as you think. now on to the jet specifics.
Mig-29:
strengths: very tight turns, lots of afterburner
weaknesses: slow to respond to changes in direction, slow to adjust airspeed, missles track it almost as good as an F-35,
misc: the hit box is slightly under the jet, so be aware of that when your flying low, alot of people hit trees that they think they will clear under them.
F-18:
Strengths: very responsive and stable, can adjust airspeed very fast, when turning if you have afterburner on missles will slide off you... so save it!!! If your ab is not on when the missle is about to hit you, it may well in fact hit you.
weaknesses: short afterburner time, rather wide turning radius,
misc: this jets wing tip to wing tip span is very wide, if there is a jet youll clip stuff with your wintips on, it's this jet.
J-10:
strengths: very tight turning radius, missles slide off when after burner is deployed, long afterburner time.
weaknesses: Very, very sloppy controls, very poor ground attack because of this. long speed adjustment, very prone to ramming helos also because of lack of responsivness. constant changes in direction will cause a pilot of a j10 to lose his targets most times.
misc: flying this jet almost feels like you've had a few drinks IMHO, I very much disllike this jet and will steal a enemy jet whenever I can. many times youll get first kill against this jet just because the enemy j10 pilot thinks hes untouchable, you know what? you dont need lock for guns right? use em...
F-35
strengths: very responsive, good turning radius, very stable, has the highest airspeed at 750+meters altitutude and can even out run missles... this is known as a stratorun, I havent had anybody able to stop this and it's not that hard to perform, it will drive j-10 whores crazy, and enable you to harrass them non stop.( I will elaborate on the F35 more and the stratorun at the end of this post)
5.
when engaging, if you are not being threatened, do not ever disengage. pursue him until hes dead, jets and helos... Keep in mind I'm not saying dont break off, if you hit him and hes smoking, let him think you broke off, but really wait for him above his airfield, think about it, you know hes going to need repairs, head him off... enage and re engage but dont let your enemy go ever. The biggest part of flying is mostly mental, ( more on that next) and donig this over and over, you will start to see people bail out of aircraft and helos before you even kill them... that is when you know youve beaten them, either that or they leave the server, or stop flying. helo's need to know that once you start shooting them, it's over.
6.
engaging jets. First of all you need to fly High, whoever gets first spot regardless of the jet, usually wins. when you fly low, you are easily spotted by infantry, which tell the enemy jet where you are, stay above 250 meters, preferably 450 when sweeping for jets. use your first missle to see if he has flares, fire it, he drops flares, now... remember the jet description I outlined earlier? lets say your in an f-35 and hes in a mig, fire off all 5 missles as fast as you can, the mig WILL die since missles track the mig very well. now lets say your chasing a F-18 in a mig, the mig is more maneuverable but the F-18 can make missles slide off right if the F-18 times after burner burst properly, so heres what you do, you lock onto him, wait a second, see if he drops flares, if not, fire one missle, now keep folowing him, make sure you use your guns you can easilly kill him with guns only, lets say hes evading your guns, hes going to be using after burner, watch his exhuast it will shorten after about 10 seconds, hell most likely be short on after burner, heres what you do, fire your missles one at a time, with about a second and a half time between each, youll at least get one hit more than likely two hits. F-35 vs J-10, this is a challenge, lets be honest here, but not as bad as people would have you believe, reason? stratorun baby... YOU as the F-35 pick and choose where your engagements happen, doesnt sound like much but if you dont want to fight anymore, you just strato run away and theres nothing he can do, keep spotting him and using your guns, try to get off a few missles using the first as your flare dropper, and after you lose him even remotely start climing and strato run away, lather rinse repeat, you will eventually kill him but you have to be patient, In this scenario your not pwning him, your establishing that he is not unapposed in the air, let me put it this way, the best pilot in a j10 might get 100 points in a round , if you harrass him and take him out number one, he might not get the jet if some one else is waiting, number two you have the option of keeping him grounded (I generally dont like doing this) and number 3 he will be so busy looking over his shoulder, he wont be as effective, the same pilot might get between 15 to 30 points. Your in the fighter, do your job, if you dont keep on him the helos and every thing else will pay, dont screw your team. unless your fireing angle is really bad generally +90 degrees is a questionable firing angel, thats why alot of people dont even hit F-35s with missles, if you miss F-35s with missles, your fireing at bad angles. there are many tactics but you need to be thinking and adapting, if somethings not working you better change it fast. heres a few common tactics, tail your wingman from far away and above him, he doesnt even have to know your doing this, just use your mini map to see where your wing man is and tail him high above, now if you see a jet try to get on him you can lock him up but try gunning first, missles have a nasty habit of going through flares and hittin the freindly jet, you can also use this to your advantage when being chased, guns are much safer for your wingman so get used to using them, dont be afraid to spook the enemy jet with a lock tone though, once your wingman is clear feel free to fire missles. its kind of mean but it s the best way to make use of a pilot that is less than stellar and wont squad up with you. second tactic is loiter high over his airfield, pounce on him when hes flying straight and level and gun him, still not dead but now he knows your there? why not fire a missle? youll know when your detected when he banks hard left/right or pulls up hard. if he keep lolly gagging along empty guns into him untill he makes like a roman candle. guns hitting jets and helos make no sound, the only way they know your hitting them is if one tracer flys by them, so make sure your bullets dont miss. also when engaging bombers, always try to kill them with guns only, its not that hard and takes less time than missles.
7.
killing helos. This is not hard at all. rule number one, DO NOT LOCK ONTO ATTACK HELOS WITH MISSLES!!! they will try to evade you, mimicing an ugly seizure and increase the likelyhood of you ramming them. It litterally takes a half second of cannon fire to the canopy or engine to kill an attack helo... ask yurigo or kelderos. transports are a different story, sometimes you have to use one missle to finish it off because you dont have time. remember that missle fired from the bottom, or top or front and rear almost always hit. dont fire missles from the sides, they almost never hit. #1 killer of jets is falling wreckage, plan to turn left or right, and try to avoid flying under helos in flight, helos that are on the ground are very different, once they start panicing they tend to hit the throttle and go straight up, either you kill that helo on the first pass or hes going to pop straight up into your flight path... dont miss.
8.
Stupid ways to die...chasing the same jet as your wingman, you will undoubtedly smack eachother, looking like complete morons, just dont do it. if you do chase the same jet, get far behind the lead freindly jet and just be there in case he runs out of missles you can pick up the kill or contintue the engagment while he rearms, then he can relieve you to rearm, this is how two F-35's can easily kill a J-10 by the way, think of it as tag team flying. other stupid ways to die are. not checking your mini map before rearming repairing, if there is another jet coming dont just fly low or straight, break off before you get to the airstrip, also dont commit blind turns to rearm or repair. following the enemy jet too far out of bound or too high, dont let him commit suicide and take you with him, let the fool die by his own hand, all the better. BTW, when you suspect a pilot is possible going to die from being out of bound, watch and see for his name to pop up bing "NO MORE" confirm your kill, even though you didnt kill him. Stay away from the enemy carrier if you are china or mec, stay just out of phalanx range, there are so many reasons for this that all I can say is just trust me on this one, if you want to die in a lame fashion, and become stagnant skill wise ignore this advice.
9. Ground AA and spotting vehicles through minimap. this is really simple, ground AA has a ceiling and range of 300 meters, if you are above that they cant touch you. lets say they do enage you, check your minimap, wheres the closest enemy flag? thats more than likely the enemy aa that lit you up. I can emphasize this enough, you must kill any ground aa that shoots at you to set an example, if he shot at you hell shoot at the helo and keep shooting at you, flip around like a pissed off hornet and take him out with guns... never bomb stationary aa... its a waste.
stationary aa is easy, now mobile aa is a pain in the ass at times if you cant locate it, heres a really easy way to locate mobile aa, first off look at your map, if you see an empty mobile aa, try hitting that with bombs and a strafe at the same time. alot of times they will jump out as not to pop up on your targeting hud.... use that against him. some times they will find a blind spot and hide next to a hill or in a gulley, this is where you have to be smarter... if you have a wingman follow him around, watch for missles to come up at him, if you see them, you just spotted the little SOB, now turn around and set up a steep attack run, take out the mobile aa... its taht simple.
remember the way you spotted the empty moblile aa above? well that works for jets and helos also. If your going to supress an assett, you dont have to be keeping a visual, watch your map, the minute it disappears, you know someone got in it, go to it and kill it... simple right? WRONG... if someone is waiting for it to spawn they will jump in before it even pops up on the map, in which case you will have to keep a visual, only use this on already spawned assets that are empty.
10.
Getting in their head.
This is how you establish long term air superiority. what's long term air superiority? it's when you know, your enemy knows, that you run the show in the air, not just one round, but for any round you are in the jet. heres how it works, lets say you get the jet and its your first round, your hunting jets first always. find and constitantly harrass and kill the other jet, this is very important so listen up, you DO NOT, i repeat DO NOT, spawn rape him, you dont want him to justify in his head losing to you saying "well, if he let me up I'd kill him" your going to give him the illusion of having a fair round, all you have to do is shoot him down once. once you shoot him down, monitor his air field, from above 300 meters, you dont want to draw attention to your self, use all your view to see if he starts to take off, watch your mini map for an empty jet... use all your tools at your disposal for monitoring. once he gets up and get about a runway length away from the airstrip, drop on him and start gunning withouth lock, if he evades lock him up. Now what you did here was let him think he got to take off, second you got first spot, first round fired and first missle lock. Even if you screw it up, hes more than likely going ot be dammaged, meaning he has to come back to airfieeld to repair... guess where your going to wait for him? lather rinse repeat. First jet to get dammaged between two equal pilots will usually lose for this reason, That is why you never let a damaged jet go long enough to repair.
Now that you have a way to tip the odds in your favor, you want to write that first round off as you telling the other enemy pilot, "your not flying unaposed and if you do fly, I'll be here waiting" most pilots have a short tolerance for personal failure, I call it the EGO effect. it takes 1 maybe two rounds max of you doing this before they are defeated mentally and you will see them bail, or just fly very recklessly, congrats... this is when you start doing your real dammage. until now, youve been forced into long dogfights inbetween which you had 30 seconds to either kill the second jet or kill enemy attack helos, if you are bombing ground targets while establishing airsuperiority they better be worth it, you generally shouldnt have time. this is what your itinerary should be, shoot down jet, 30 seconds to find and kill second jet, if second jet down kill attack helo, if time remaining usually 5 to 10 seconds if your good, go back to airbase rearm and find first jet again and kill it ( aka lather rinse repeat) remember, that pilots have a low tolerance for personal failure, especially good ones, if you are in an F-35 and you get shot down 4 or 5 times in a round against a J-10, you are actually doing pretty good, remember you are stopping him from ravaging your attack helo and other assets, that 20 or 30 point score he has, it's your job to make sure it's not a 100 point score, you'll have next round in the j-10 and youll already have seen him fly knowing his flight habits. So take your lumps like a man, and take one for the team.
Closing notes:
As the fighter pilot you enable the attack helos to do their job as well as the bomber. The attack helo can annhialate armor to the point it is ridiculous and game winning, if there is no enemy jet to stop a good attack helo and no enemy attack helo to bother it as well as limited ground aa, your friendly attack helo should have a score higher than you, fighter clears the way, attack helo brings the wrecking ball. watch how I fly when kelderos and yurigo are in an attack helo, I protect them for a reason. also watch when I'm not on their team, I go after them as a priority. you need to be ablel to reckognize what is doing dammage to your team. if that helo is a problem, take him out, watch the red names that are at the top of the kill count for the enemy, what are they using? a jet? a helo? go after them. A good fighter and attack helo litterally can a make a noob loosey goosey team annihalate a team that is more organised. think about it, they cant cap a flag, it goes neutral I bomb it, attack helos shows up and guards it while killing everything that it sees until a ground squad gets there, if they cant cap a flag, then they can only lose flags, no armor or vehicles are able to operate also, forcing them to walk. do you see where all of the points in this guide come together from the spotting empty units, air supperioity and your priorities all come together? it is for this goal, to become a part of a combined element. a good fighter and helo/bomber are devasting... period, but if you dont have the fighter, your behind the 8 ball and the stack is stacked against you from the start. just think of the assets in this game like you would the food chain, it goes jets, helo, armor, cars, infantry. always make sure you are using your assets, dont run on foot when you have a tank sitting idle at your spawn, who knows, a guy like me might come along and maybe "borrow" your tank helo or jet... remember that and dont be a victim of asset theft, the only person to blame for asset theft is the team it was stolen from. before I forget an easy way to level the playing field sometimes is to steal the enemy jet, easiest way to do this is to just bomb the spot where the jet spawns about 5 seconds before the jet spawns there killing the enemy waiting then flying back around and bailing out, pop your chute at the last second and get in his jet. each map has a different time frame for jet spawns, i suggest you pay attention to that time and take note, most times are around 45 seconds or so but some are as short as 20-25 seconds. think about this tactic, maybe you want to drop a mine in front of your jet spawn just in case some one like to steal jets, maybe if your stealing jets going sniper with the m95 and shooting the pilot out before he takes off is easier. measure, judge then act, reassess and act again if need be. Now as promised heres one of the advanced guides I wrote for another forum a while back, at the end of it is how to do a stratorun, it is the only way I know of to guaruntee losing a jet on your six. I couple of things are redundant but I recommend you read throught the entire post so you dont miss any details, hope you enjoy.
TotalBF2 jet survival guide BY ||3RB||MOBB:
This is a more advanced pointers for Fighter pilots NOT BOMBERS!!! so they can be more effective, everything below has a time and place, if you use the wrong tactic in the wrong place it will be the equivalent to using a screwdriver on a lug nut or a monkey wrench on a nail. Use your head when you fly and dont get mad, when people fly mad they fly like crap. also there will be a f35 specific section at the end of this pointer guide.
-ground aa has a range of 300 feet approx. so fly above this and you should be safe from it, compensate for elevation of ground aa.
-kill ground aa as a priority if it locks onto you, you dont want 2 or three of these shooting at you, make it brutally clear ground aa will not be tolerated. you can triangulate where the locks are coming from by just where you get locked on at. if you cant find a mobile aa, tail a freindly jet from quite a way back and pick off the ground when it lites up, this is a very good way to find mobile aa. people like to sit next to it until you fly by then shoot you in the but after you fly by to eliminate this possible threat, just strafe the aa at the enemy flags, even if its empty. youll be surprised how many times you hit a guy hiding next to it.
-always fly medic. if you go out of bounds once youll understand why... Just do it...
-look behind you every 5 seconds at least, more if possible. also look behind you before you get a rearm, and look behind you just as you get done rearming, this alone will save your but more times than you can count.
-spot the enemy jet first. First spot = first kill, how do you spot him? Well, fly high, and sweep avenues of approach that he will be coming to and from his airfield, dont circle above it even at 800 feet, it's a common spot for more advanced pilots to sweep, tail your wingman or bomber from a higher altitude and far back, you should be doing this tail via mini map so you see where he is, if he gets a tail you should see it, worse case scenario if he gets shot down youll know you just have to nose down and hit after burner to get on him. also your attack helo is a juicy target, monitor it, better yet get them in your squad and tell them to spot the bugger, they should be happy to help you kill the sob.
-Ground aa has a much shorter tone time than a jet, learn to tell the difference in sound and many times you wont even have to look back to see whats shooting at you.
-if you get the enemy jet smoking and you lose sight of him, he will most likely be heading to his airfield for repairs... ambush him.
-use the nose cannon, use the nose cannon, use the nose cannon.
-practice getting nose cannon bullets into windows like the hut at intake on kubra damn. ive killed alot of infantry hiding in the building thinking they were safe.
-When flying a jet, always take out the other jets before taking out ground targets or helos. You will live alot longer if you do this.
- When patroling for other jets, fly high. I know it sounds simple but flying low will get you consitantly killed. Once you kill the enemy jet you know its going to be at least 20 seconds till he respawns, find either the other jet and kill it, if it is down kill the attack helo, if it is down then kill aa or armor in that order, lather rinse repeat and you will be a much better, and organized pilot.
-when you shoot down the other jet, at the time the enemy jet respawns be waiting over the carrier, mind you this isnt to spawn rape since the phalanx can shred your jet to pieces, but just to spot him, once he takes off, follow him until he is out of protective range of the phalanx (essex aa) then engage him. You will do a couple of things, #1 you will get in his head, he'll think you keep spotting him and taking him down first, #2 you will ensure your own survival. You want the other guy to give up mentally or be intimidated, I noticed people fly alot worse and more reckless when they are either angry or wreckless. Dont spawn rape the carrier, let him take off, let him think hes being outclassed, if you kill him on the carrier he'll have a reason to cry fowl, also this will work on any server even ones where uncap attacking is forbidden.
-Dont answer nasty comments while flying, youll undoubtably get locked up and killed while your typing your rebuttle to whatever he's saying about you, get used to insults when you fly, as a matter of fact the cheat accusations and insults generally mean you've arrived as an aviator.
- Keep your flares between you and the enemy jet. alot of people will drop flares while pulling up, or drop flares then pull up, I have bad news for you if you do this, if I keep you in my bottom edge of my targeting circle I wont even lose a lock on you since your flares will fall down away from you while you start to pull up. You either want to be already pointed up when you drop them or pointed down, and try to fly back around through your own flares if you are in any other jet than the F35. If you dont have flares, try locking up a hostile helo or if you are chasing a jet in gun mode lock him up, he will most likely drop flares... giveing you a countermeasure also.
-Dont ever, never, never never chase the same jet as your wingman, Youll hit eachother and looking like fricken morons while the enemy pilot laughs his but off.
-dont ever never, never fire missles if enemy jet is chasing your wingman, youll more than likely hit your wingman. only fire if you know your angle is good and you wont his your wingman... better yet use your guns, and use your lock tone only to spook the enemy jet to break off.
-this meant to be used on easily rattled pilots, this works well on mouse and keyboard pilots also, you can tell by the squirlly way they fly, lock him up when he is in bombing runs at the last second and watch him panic and hit a tree, same holds true for rearms, when he goes to rearm, lock him up just before he gets to the runway, some times people cant resist the urge to fly straight and get those new bombs giving you a great opportunity, second they might pull away engaging you with a partial munition load, either way you win.
-use your bomb mode when sneaking up on a jet and gun him until he knows your there, when he starts to break then lock him up, its free dammage without a missle, exploit it!!!
-never use missles on attack helos, this prompts them to evade and raises the chance of you smacking into them. Use your guns IN BOMB MODE and aim for any part of the glass canopy, he will blow up before he can get a turn off.
-transport helos can be taken down with guns only every time if you come at them from behind and at a forty five degree angle. since they are moving forward it gives you more time to put more bullets in them, same for attack helos but they blow up so easy you dont need it. IF you need to use a missle on a transport helo to finish it off on your gun run, either fire it head on, from the rear or if he flys above 300 feet fly under the helo straight up and launch a couple of missles while gunning, be ready to break so the wreckage doesnt kill you, missles always hit black hawks and cobras when you fire them straight up into the under bellies. BAD news for helo pilots eh?
-DO NOT CUT YOUR THROTTLE!!! its a bad habit and can turn into a crutch, if you do this the enemy pilot might over shoot you once but he will circle around and be on you again in seconds, worse is the second time you do it he will use guns on you and kill you.
-F35 SPECIFIC SURVIVAL INFO
-cruising altitude should never be below 300 to 250 feet. you need that altitude to get to stratorun altitude in time. if you bomb look behind you first, then bomb at steep angles then imediatley pull back up to altitude to reduce your exposure time.
-rearming repairing:
when you your go in for a rearm repair, not only look behind you but dont fly straight and level and low, fly high and drop straight down to the carrier,look behind you then pull up to get the rearm, the second your done pull straight up and look behind you again, get to crusing altitude and continue sweeping, this reduces your exposure time at low altitude.
-what to do if you are damaged,
Dont rearm repair right aways, fly at at least 600 feet while your flares recharge first, when you get flares back then fly in for repairs, be paranoid for an amush at your airbase and do a high altitude sweep first before making a repair pass. airbase ambush is a common finishing tacic.
-F35 is a hit and run fighter, dont get into turning contests, if this happens start climing while turning or evading and strato run away to reengage. when you pounce on people you should be above them and use your guns first in bomb mode as not to alert them then when they start to evade lock them up. this way you do dammage every time regardles of missles.
-killing an experience j10 is a 2 part process:
Get it in your head that a good j10 pilot will not be killed most times on your first attack, what you want to do is set him up for a 2 part kill. First part is sneaking up on him in gun mode from high above him. use your guns!!! shoot him when he levels out for longer than a second, try to make every bulllet hit with out missing, the way hell know hes being hit is if a tracer flys by his canopy, so dont miss right? when he evades lock him up, you might get lucky and hit him with a missle but lets plan for the worst. lets say it misses and by this point he should be smoking, that was your goal, you just want to get him smoking. pull up and get to altitude and strato run away , now hes damaged and you know hes going to be either looking for you, or repairing, do a high altitude sweep over his airfield, then drop down to where you can barely see the ground, then pull up another 50 feet, now you shoud be able to spot him as he goes in for a rearm repair, pounce on him again with guns and that should be the end of him. If the airfield becomes too hot or you do it too many times, you will have to reengage him in the air for the second pass, try to do it in a timely manner to be able to catch him with his flares spent.
-MUST fly medic. No if ands or buts, essential part of survival in this jet.
-Save at least 80 percent of your after burner at all times, you need this to stratorun away from missles if you get locked up.
-THe following is known as a stratorun:
You can out run missles in the F35. To do so you will need to be at 800 feet to 850 feet tapping your after burner in short bursts while staying in bounds or close enough in bounds to be able to get back into the map. Number one, always fly medic. this lets you heal your self giving you precious seconds to get back in bounds. first of all you need to fly relatively high at all times, at least 350 to 400 feet high, this alows you to nose up and get to altitude, ideally once you reach 700 feet and you start tapping the after burner the missle will start to fall behind, at 800, 850 the missle will fall away substantially. This is very important!!! dont look behind you when you get past 500 feet, you dont have too, just start tapping your after burner, and focus on staying at 800 to 850, if you look behind you you will go to high or too low and die. while getting to altitude you want to stall his lock on you if possible while climbing to your altitude, once at 700 start afterburning to get away from him, remember to tap the after burner so you dont burn it all up too fast. also remember, save much of yoru after burner for this maneuver, it is the only thing that will always save you each and every time. Try to save your flares for when youare already going upwards, dont break upwards while droping flares or he might not even break lock on you, try to be flying in loops while gaining alttitude like a split s works pretty good but change it upso you dont get predictable, at the change of direction in your split s is a good time to drop flares since youare pointed upwardes, if he didnt get a lock on you and your at 700 feet, punch it, you should start hauling @s$ in that f35 if the tone is still there after 3 seconds drop your flares the missles should drop off, and the enemy jet should be long gone, if you dont have flares you will need to maintain that insane speed at 800 850 for approximately 4 to 8 seconds, it feels like an eternity but it beats dying right? now that you lost the enemy jet and shook his missles drop back down and fight right? WRONG!!! you dont have flares back yet buddy, wait until your flares recharge, until then fly around 600 feet just to be safe in a corner of the map where no one goes until your flares recharge. I am more than happy to demonstrate this tommorow when I will be playing, I WILL warn you now though, practice in an empty server just flying at 800 and 850 feet just tapping your affter burner until your sound makes a wierd high pitch engine noise the wooosh of the jet will sound more like a weeeeeeesh!!!( p.s. i know i sound like a big homo) thats the sound you want since that is the ideal speed for dropping missles. once you get that down start practicing it, it will take one maybe two days to get it down but after that you will not look at the F35 the same way again.WARNING!!! dalian plant has a very low ceiling, do not fly over 800-820 or you will go out of control, try to out run missles on this map at around 800 and dont deviate, this is a great practice map, if you can out run missles on dalian plant, you can do it on all the maps. also when nosing up on dragon valley, try to find a patch of blue sky behind your altimeter, so you can you your altitude.
-if you zoom your map out while flying you can usually see the white lines around your field of vision, telling you which way your going so you know which way to turn to get back in bounds, when I say zoom out I mean the full screen map. also you can use your compass heading at the top of your hud in the jet but this is more difficult.
Once again this a guide for fighters, I am in my own mind, a horrible bomber pilot, i dont have the turning radiuses down, I find they are missle magnets and they are so sluggish to bank, my personal advice to you if you want to become a better fighter pilot is to stay out of the bombers all together if you plan to become a better fighter pilot it makes a big difference when you learning. also keep calm, dont let another pilot get you mad or frustrated, youll start getting sloppy, when the insults fly (and they will) dont get into it, if your evenly matched only taunt him to get him angry, or make him reckless, at most type in a lol when you shoot him down and get a flame kill. DOnt swear and keep it short if you do typesomething, I still advise you to keep your mouth shut while in the air, talk all the smack you want on the ground, but if your on the ground maybe you should focus more on shooting him down right?
additional little tricks:
placeing your lock reticle, this might seem like common knowledge but most people pull up when they get locked, and flares fall down away, if you put the bottom edge just barely on your target and give your self some space between you and your opponent, if he pops flares in level flight or just starting to pull up you wont lose your lock...at all. It doesnt always work but it is a nice tool to use when you dont want to engage in long dogfights, it works great on F-35's and on relativley inexperienced pilots.
another thing is your ping. I finally found a couple of good west coast servers to fly on where I have less than a 30 ping and OMG what a world of difference it makes. For some reason on these servers I can turn a little sharper and my missles hit with a way, way, way higher percentage. Before playing on these servers I generally played on servers where I had anywhere from a 60 to 75 ping and I thought that was fine.
This explains more than one engagement I've had where I could swear guys with low pings could out turn a fighter and their missles had uber accuracy
Bombing:
it depends on if you want to drop bombs on. I use the dual bomb drop method because I prioritize tanks with bombs or neutral flags. Tanks take two bombs to kill and I dont like having to make two passes on them so, that being said I strafe all other targets, even apcs. Apcs go up like roman candles from a steady stream of fire from the cannon on the aircraft, moreso from bombers. I have found for some reason the nose cannon on the Bombers is stronger than the cannon on the fighters, you can kill apcs easy with it and damage tanks even. try not to waste your bombs on soft targets like cars, boats, helos, planes on the deck, ground aa when you can use your nose cannon. Youll need fewer rearms and you'll be able to do alot more damage. I can make it so a car cannot leave a flag and if they take the one peace of armor thats when I drop my bomb, the whole time I will hit their ground AA and while a fly by I will spot infantry and even strafe them, asuming of course there is no enemy jets in the sky, ground attack is a cake walk.
But to anser your question I'll go over how to drop bombs in the 2x bomb method since if you can do that you can easily drop singe bombs, here goes. practice doing this with the F-35 since it is the easiest to bomb with and use that as a reference.
step #1
You dont want to be turning or pulling up or pushing the nose down when you drop bombs, establish your self in a straight flying line of at least 45 to 50 degrees.
step #2
use the center of your screen should be the TOP of the verticle line that is in the bottom half of your bombing hud... NOT THE BOTTOM OF THAT LINE... mmm...k?
step #3
when you think your dinging the target with both bombs start looking behind you to see where your bombs land... if your second bomb over shoots your either pulling up too soon or your angle of attack is too shallow...maybe both. you want to wait for the second clunk of that second bomb before you make any change in direction because guess what? if you change direction... so do your bombs. when you get the basics down, then move on to slinging bombs into hangers or door ways, if you aim small, you will miss small.
try this as a drill, fly straight down at a target from around 400 feet, absolutly strait down fly straight and release your bombs from around 200 feet, I bet they fall in a tight group one on top of the other, thats why its important to come in at the steepest angle possible. once you master stationary targets you will have to lead moving tanks and or apcs.
Just so you dont lose focus, bombs are your plan b, your bread and butter is that nose cannon, it allows you to loiter for much longer, remember... If you bomb either take out a cluster of troops taking a flag or armor, ground aa, cars and boats are a waste. If you want to screw with a ground aa bubba I climb to 600 feet and drop both bombs from a straight dive, he never hears me or sees me just two bombs right on his head with no exposure on my part. clarification: that last thing about bombing an AA position is more like a party trick, NOT your bread and butter ok? hope that helps.
The key point of having both bombs hit the same spot is not to pull up or change direction until you hear the second clunk.
I will say this in respect to each aircraft:
once you get used to the F-35, the F-18 aiming point for bomb drops is lower on the bombing hud than the f35 almost half way down that verticle line on your hud if not more.
j10: is about the same as the f35 if not a hair lower on the verticle hud line, but the problem with this jet is it is very unstable, the trick is to fly in a straight line with this jet until you hear the second clunk
mig 29: similar to the f18 aim point but just a hair higher.
A question I answered in a post on totalbf2 a while back:
The fighter should be sweeping all airspace, jets first, then attack helos when you know both jets are down, and ground AA needs to be supressed if they are engaging, 1 or 2 ground aa is a nuisance 4 or 5 is a pain in the ***, discourage them and think of it as pest control you cant eliminate it but you can put a nasty bleed on the enemy tickets by killing AA positions, A small tip here, the general ceiling for ground AA is 300 feet. fly above that and you should be ok, some AA sits at a high elevations so compensate for that, like the mobile aa at the top of the hill on construction site on kubra dam.
If you do your job well in the fighter, the bomber and attack helo on your team are going to be the ones who do the real damage, think of an mec chopper or cobra with nothing shooting at it. If you play in a server with me and fly the attack helo youll notice me peppering the hell out of ground aa and the enemy helo will "go away" withing 5 to 10 seconds of you spotting it, even if I dont see the helo on my map when you spot it, I'll see you flashing telling me you spotted something, now what would a freindly attack helo spot that it cant kill? either a jet or anoother attack helo.
BTW the SU-30 is by far and large the best bomber, but it's still a chew toy for a fighter, the hit box is really large so it's as easy to shoot down as the f-15 with guns...
A series of questions that someone asked me once and is very good info:
to answer your questions in order hurricane here we go:
1. Check your ping, you dont want to fly in servers with a ping over 80 preferably under that. Im going to seperate your first question into two parts...evading missles from jets, and missles from ground AA.You can tell a definite difference from ground aa lock ons and other aircraft locking on to you. Ground AA lock times are VERY short... stupid short in fact when compared to jets lock ons and start recognizing the difference, because you will want to deal with each differently.
-Missles from jets-
Now in a j10 or f18 your pretty much untouchable but lets just say you are doing something wrong, Your most likely popping your flares too early, wait for a solid tone before popping your flares, and break while looking behind you, countering your oponents every move, if he reacts to your last move wait till hes in the middle of banking to reengage then break back in the opposite direction and continue in that direction you'll lose most people with this one. The kicker is wait untilll your fully locked onto before droppinng the flares, sometimes it's just a jet coming straight at you, in which case dont waste your flares, let him waste his missles hes not going to hit you... unless you fly perfectly straight at him.
-missles from ground AA-
I have a feeling this is what is biting you in the a$$. once youve learned to identify this lock by the very short lock on time, pop your flares the exact second it goes solid. It takes a split second after he gets lock for his missles to track properly, if you do it this way youll buy your self enough time to get out of his lock on range which is approx 300 feet in any direction. While your flares are recharging fly above this to take ground AA out of the equation which you should be doing anyways since there are other fighters up looking for you. Ground AA tracks rediculously well, A mobile aa will take down a jet easily if your not paying attention or you pop your flares late.
Now if you are getting locked up by ground AA, I can actually make it so ground aa missles hit you if I get lock even if you pop flares, at least one of the missles will hit you. You have to listen for how long it takes for lock to get on to you, if it seems almost instantaniously its probably ground AA pop flares the second it goes steady tone, ground aa actually takes a split second after they get tone to lock correctly... use that info to yoru knowledge. I have a feeling what is killing you is mobile AA.
question #2
Your flying too low, altitude is your freind, also equally important look behind you regularly and dont fly flat and level for longer than a second...ever. I take down so many people with guns in j10s it's ridiculous. For starters you know he has to rearm and repair sometime, dont be predictable and circle at 700 feet over his runway, if hes decent he'll check over his airstrip for you time to time since it's a common place for the enemy to loiter, every one has a flight pattern, notice his and exploite them, is he really good at attack but never looks behind him? gun him down then with no lock. Does he cut his throttle over the airstrip alot? ambush him, does he always engage your wingman? tail your wingman from high above (bait him) Does he cut his throttle to maintain lock while engaging yoru wingman? Hes toest, missles and or guns. This is the key to winning in the air, spotting first and there are alot of moving parts, but in the end you need to identify what your enemy is not doing and use that against him, also identify where and when you get locked up, what could you be doing wrong? critique yourself at the end of every round...HONESTLY and truthfully. Try flying high to begin with and only focus on other jets, not ground targets, I bet youll start living longer since you will be more focused, always engage a jet if you see it, unless you think his wingman is tailing him, its like a big rock paper scissors game, mix it up a bit and youll do fine, its when you lather rinse repeat any tactic you get in trouble.
question #3
Hes probably timing his flares right, try firing one missle to prompt his flare deployment, if he doesnt he'll get hit. if he does pop flares fire off a salvo of three missles 1 extra missle for good measure so he cant bail from a plane on fire...important on wake. one other thing, if you lock onto him at around 500 feet he can easily climb to 750 and out run your missles... I do this all the time just make sure you have after burner. also make sure your launch angle isnt too extreme, compensate by leading him with your missle fire, if hes above you trying to climb use the bottom edge of your missle lock circle, also on some planes like the mig 29 and f18 missle wont launch at all if you dont do this
question #4
This is easy... THE fighter isnt doing his damn job, simple as that. Bombers are fodder for any decent pilot, the only defense the bomber has is to climb and only come down for targets but he has to rearm alot and he gets spotted alot by infantry when they get tired of getting bombed by him, pay attention to the flashing players when you here enemy plane spotted, you cant see the plane alot of the time but you will see the freindly flashing that spotted him on your minimap.
question #5
I have a logitech so I feel that if I try to help with this it would be purely speculation. As long as you have a twist handle and you have your yaw/pitch factor maxed out with your sensitivity, that would be where to start, and map your rear view to your view hat, chase view to be precise but its nice to have the standard rear view also to spot infantry on the ground for a follow up pass.
I hope that helps bud, alot of this I regrett to say is getting a feel for this and that. But the biggest part is you need to be able to do 10 different things at once with out hitting a mountain side or tree. One more tip that will save you alot when you get more seasoned:
-check your mini map for freindly jets before rearming, circle if you have to but you wont smack a freindly jet if you do this
-If your wingman is on a jet, dont engage the same jet, your more than likely going to hit each other
-Plan what your going to engage or suppress before you even get up in the air. it should go... fighter then bomber then ground aa then attack helo then black hawk and then armor. some maps like wake island the black hawk is a way bigger threat than the cobra.
-spectate other pilots in third person view who you know are good and just write the round off to training. maybe join their squad and pick their brain via voip, I have people do it to me all the time, I usually invite people who call me a hacker to spectate me and I'll show them what I'm doing.
There is no silver bullet, only tools to add to the tool box, if you use a screw driver on a nut your going to fail, and vice versa a wrench on a screw and youll fail you have to be able to assess and reassess constantly all while not smacking a tree and killin the enemy so unfortunatly alot of this is practicing, however you can work smarter or harder and maybe a bit of both, compartmentalize one thing at a time and they will all come together, dont tackle it all at once, I suggest working on taking down other jets first and yes, the best defense is a good offense
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||3RB||MOBB Stats:
http://bf2s.com/player/46267545/
1.
First things first, make sure you have your geometry set to as high as it will go as well as viewdistance, and second youll need a flight stick with a twist handle... period... if you cant establish this, I highly recommend you resolve your situation so you can have this set up or you continue ground pounding. When in game always fly medic, going medic is essential for survivability and spotting where your teammates have died, unless you have a very specific reason, always fly medic. also, set your sensitivity for your jet controls to 10 as well as your yaw and pitch, there should be 3 settings one after the other in the control menu.
2.
Prioritize your targets BEFORE YOU GO UP!!! what are you up there for? what is your goal of being up in the air? Your tactical priorities should be as follows with very minimal change. JETS, aa, helos, armor/vehicles. I wanted to also add neutral flags to the priority, as the fastest moving object in the game, you are the best react force to any flag taking on the map, when a flag goes neutral look at your map, if no freindly dots are there, it means bad guys are there waiting in the open for a flag to go up, bomb the hell out of them fast, this will mess up the best squads even and enable your team to maintain a ticket bleed on the enemy, you need to assess the best time to do this, if your not engaged with another jet, you really have no excuse for not doing this, this should be what your bombs are primarily saved for. as for vehicles, you can litteraly force the enemy to come in on foot, all vehicles have a targeting box around them, this is what you use your guns for, dont bomb unless you have to like they are close to getting a flag and you dont have time to set up, bombs should be saved for that peice of armor that is almost half way between his flag and your flag, let him work and drive all that way for nothing, then when hes almost there, bomb him. it's demoralizing and frustrating, people dont play well when they are frustrated. keep in mind, when you start intercepting a route of travel between two flags (works awsome on wake) stick to that route, if the enemy has a second way in, lets take wake for example, if I was strafing all cars coming into airfield from the north as china, and lets say the us capped the south tip, I would tell my wingman, "hey, start strafing cars and intercepting all vehicles from that flag, ill keep pounding this flag". doing this FORCES the enemy to come in on foot, make sure you kill the enemy jets, but you should have a good 45 second window in between jet kill to maintain your
3.
youll need a mic, if you cant talk to your wingman, your just two lone wolfs, two decent f-35 pilots can easily Gang up taking turns, and take out one good j-10 pilot, and always be in a designated air squad... a good commander will realize your better than arty, and if you do your job right will constantly be tasking you with mop up operations on straglers. also there is a command the commander can give to jets it sound like "attack here" youll see a sword pop up on your hud, if he gives that order on your attack run you can litterally strafe individual infantry in the water, my old designated clan commander ||3rb||thunderbolt used me for this alot. THE COMMANDER NEEDS TO SPOT VERY ACURATELY, where he spots is where you shoot, give him about 5 or 6 tries, if he cant get it down, your going to have to strafe them at the last second visually.
4.
the first skill you need is how to take down a jet with a jet, is each jet is different, so different in fact that if you fly an F-18 the way you fly an F-35 you will get pwned, like wise if you fly a Mig the same way you fly a J-10 you will get pwned. I will go into some very basic info about the individual jets so you know what to emphasize and what to minimize as far as strengths and weaknesses respectivly. I will not give you meaningless fluff number like wingspan, or other technical crap, only what is in BF2 and what actually matters to proloning and facilitating success as a fighter pilot in short... No BS. I will emphasize a section at the end of this post just for the F-35. The F-35 is in my mind the second best jet in this game after the J-10 air to air wise, overall the F-35 is my preffered jet, dont believe me? try shooting me down when I'm in an F-35, its not as easy as you think. now on to the jet specifics.
Mig-29:
strengths: very tight turns, lots of afterburner
weaknesses: slow to respond to changes in direction, slow to adjust airspeed, missles track it almost as good as an F-35,
misc: the hit box is slightly under the jet, so be aware of that when your flying low, alot of people hit trees that they think they will clear under them.
F-18:
Strengths: very responsive and stable, can adjust airspeed very fast, when turning if you have afterburner on missles will slide off you... so save it!!! If your ab is not on when the missle is about to hit you, it may well in fact hit you.
weaknesses: short afterburner time, rather wide turning radius,
misc: this jets wing tip to wing tip span is very wide, if there is a jet youll clip stuff with your wintips on, it's this jet.
J-10:
strengths: very tight turning radius, missles slide off when after burner is deployed, long afterburner time.
weaknesses: Very, very sloppy controls, very poor ground attack because of this. long speed adjustment, very prone to ramming helos also because of lack of responsivness. constant changes in direction will cause a pilot of a j10 to lose his targets most times.
misc: flying this jet almost feels like you've had a few drinks IMHO, I very much disllike this jet and will steal a enemy jet whenever I can. many times youll get first kill against this jet just because the enemy j10 pilot thinks hes untouchable, you know what? you dont need lock for guns right? use em...
F-35
strengths: very responsive, good turning radius, very stable, has the highest airspeed at 750+meters altitutude and can even out run missles... this is known as a stratorun, I havent had anybody able to stop this and it's not that hard to perform, it will drive j-10 whores crazy, and enable you to harrass them non stop.( I will elaborate on the F35 more and the stratorun at the end of this post)
5.
when engaging, if you are not being threatened, do not ever disengage. pursue him until hes dead, jets and helos... Keep in mind I'm not saying dont break off, if you hit him and hes smoking, let him think you broke off, but really wait for him above his airfield, think about it, you know hes going to need repairs, head him off... enage and re engage but dont let your enemy go ever. The biggest part of flying is mostly mental, ( more on that next) and donig this over and over, you will start to see people bail out of aircraft and helos before you even kill them... that is when you know youve beaten them, either that or they leave the server, or stop flying. helo's need to know that once you start shooting them, it's over.
6.
engaging jets. First of all you need to fly High, whoever gets first spot regardless of the jet, usually wins. when you fly low, you are easily spotted by infantry, which tell the enemy jet where you are, stay above 250 meters, preferably 450 when sweeping for jets. use your first missle to see if he has flares, fire it, he drops flares, now... remember the jet description I outlined earlier? lets say your in an f-35 and hes in a mig, fire off all 5 missles as fast as you can, the mig WILL die since missles track the mig very well. now lets say your chasing a F-18 in a mig, the mig is more maneuverable but the F-18 can make missles slide off right if the F-18 times after burner burst properly, so heres what you do, you lock onto him, wait a second, see if he drops flares, if not, fire one missle, now keep folowing him, make sure you use your guns you can easilly kill him with guns only, lets say hes evading your guns, hes going to be using after burner, watch his exhuast it will shorten after about 10 seconds, hell most likely be short on after burner, heres what you do, fire your missles one at a time, with about a second and a half time between each, youll at least get one hit more than likely two hits. F-35 vs J-10, this is a challenge, lets be honest here, but not as bad as people would have you believe, reason? stratorun baby... YOU as the F-35 pick and choose where your engagements happen, doesnt sound like much but if you dont want to fight anymore, you just strato run away and theres nothing he can do, keep spotting him and using your guns, try to get off a few missles using the first as your flare dropper, and after you lose him even remotely start climing and strato run away, lather rinse repeat, you will eventually kill him but you have to be patient, In this scenario your not pwning him, your establishing that he is not unapposed in the air, let me put it this way, the best pilot in a j10 might get 100 points in a round , if you harrass him and take him out number one, he might not get the jet if some one else is waiting, number two you have the option of keeping him grounded (I generally dont like doing this) and number 3 he will be so busy looking over his shoulder, he wont be as effective, the same pilot might get between 15 to 30 points. Your in the fighter, do your job, if you dont keep on him the helos and every thing else will pay, dont screw your team. unless your fireing angle is really bad generally +90 degrees is a questionable firing angel, thats why alot of people dont even hit F-35s with missles, if you miss F-35s with missles, your fireing at bad angles. there are many tactics but you need to be thinking and adapting, if somethings not working you better change it fast. heres a few common tactics, tail your wingman from far away and above him, he doesnt even have to know your doing this, just use your mini map to see where your wing man is and tail him high above, now if you see a jet try to get on him you can lock him up but try gunning first, missles have a nasty habit of going through flares and hittin the freindly jet, you can also use this to your advantage when being chased, guns are much safer for your wingman so get used to using them, dont be afraid to spook the enemy jet with a lock tone though, once your wingman is clear feel free to fire missles. its kind of mean but it s the best way to make use of a pilot that is less than stellar and wont squad up with you. second tactic is loiter high over his airfield, pounce on him when hes flying straight and level and gun him, still not dead but now he knows your there? why not fire a missle? youll know when your detected when he banks hard left/right or pulls up hard. if he keep lolly gagging along empty guns into him untill he makes like a roman candle. guns hitting jets and helos make no sound, the only way they know your hitting them is if one tracer flys by them, so make sure your bullets dont miss. also when engaging bombers, always try to kill them with guns only, its not that hard and takes less time than missles.
7.
killing helos. This is not hard at all. rule number one, DO NOT LOCK ONTO ATTACK HELOS WITH MISSLES!!! they will try to evade you, mimicing an ugly seizure and increase the likelyhood of you ramming them. It litterally takes a half second of cannon fire to the canopy or engine to kill an attack helo... ask yurigo or kelderos. transports are a different story, sometimes you have to use one missle to finish it off because you dont have time. remember that missle fired from the bottom, or top or front and rear almost always hit. dont fire missles from the sides, they almost never hit. #1 killer of jets is falling wreckage, plan to turn left or right, and try to avoid flying under helos in flight, helos that are on the ground are very different, once they start panicing they tend to hit the throttle and go straight up, either you kill that helo on the first pass or hes going to pop straight up into your flight path... dont miss.
8.
Stupid ways to die...chasing the same jet as your wingman, you will undoubtedly smack eachother, looking like complete morons, just dont do it. if you do chase the same jet, get far behind the lead freindly jet and just be there in case he runs out of missles you can pick up the kill or contintue the engagment while he rearms, then he can relieve you to rearm, this is how two F-35's can easily kill a J-10 by the way, think of it as tag team flying. other stupid ways to die are. not checking your mini map before rearming repairing, if there is another jet coming dont just fly low or straight, break off before you get to the airstrip, also dont commit blind turns to rearm or repair. following the enemy jet too far out of bound or too high, dont let him commit suicide and take you with him, let the fool die by his own hand, all the better. BTW, when you suspect a pilot is possible going to die from being out of bound, watch and see for his name to pop up bing "NO MORE" confirm your kill, even though you didnt kill him. Stay away from the enemy carrier if you are china or mec, stay just out of phalanx range, there are so many reasons for this that all I can say is just trust me on this one, if you want to die in a lame fashion, and become stagnant skill wise ignore this advice.
9. Ground AA and spotting vehicles through minimap. this is really simple, ground AA has a ceiling and range of 300 meters, if you are above that they cant touch you. lets say they do enage you, check your minimap, wheres the closest enemy flag? thats more than likely the enemy aa that lit you up. I can emphasize this enough, you must kill any ground aa that shoots at you to set an example, if he shot at you hell shoot at the helo and keep shooting at you, flip around like a pissed off hornet and take him out with guns... never bomb stationary aa... its a waste.
stationary aa is easy, now mobile aa is a pain in the ass at times if you cant locate it, heres a really easy way to locate mobile aa, first off look at your map, if you see an empty mobile aa, try hitting that with bombs and a strafe at the same time. alot of times they will jump out as not to pop up on your targeting hud.... use that against him. some times they will find a blind spot and hide next to a hill or in a gulley, this is where you have to be smarter... if you have a wingman follow him around, watch for missles to come up at him, if you see them, you just spotted the little SOB, now turn around and set up a steep attack run, take out the mobile aa... its taht simple.
remember the way you spotted the empty moblile aa above? well that works for jets and helos also. If your going to supress an assett, you dont have to be keeping a visual, watch your map, the minute it disappears, you know someone got in it, go to it and kill it... simple right? WRONG... if someone is waiting for it to spawn they will jump in before it even pops up on the map, in which case you will have to keep a visual, only use this on already spawned assets that are empty.
10.
Getting in their head.
This is how you establish long term air superiority. what's long term air superiority? it's when you know, your enemy knows, that you run the show in the air, not just one round, but for any round you are in the jet. heres how it works, lets say you get the jet and its your first round, your hunting jets first always. find and constitantly harrass and kill the other jet, this is very important so listen up, you DO NOT, i repeat DO NOT, spawn rape him, you dont want him to justify in his head losing to you saying "well, if he let me up I'd kill him" your going to give him the illusion of having a fair round, all you have to do is shoot him down once. once you shoot him down, monitor his air field, from above 300 meters, you dont want to draw attention to your self, use all your view to see if he starts to take off, watch your mini map for an empty jet... use all your tools at your disposal for monitoring. once he gets up and get about a runway length away from the airstrip, drop on him and start gunning withouth lock, if he evades lock him up. Now what you did here was let him think he got to take off, second you got first spot, first round fired and first missle lock. Even if you screw it up, hes more than likely going ot be dammaged, meaning he has to come back to airfieeld to repair... guess where your going to wait for him? lather rinse repeat. First jet to get dammaged between two equal pilots will usually lose for this reason, That is why you never let a damaged jet go long enough to repair.
Now that you have a way to tip the odds in your favor, you want to write that first round off as you telling the other enemy pilot, "your not flying unaposed and if you do fly, I'll be here waiting" most pilots have a short tolerance for personal failure, I call it the EGO effect. it takes 1 maybe two rounds max of you doing this before they are defeated mentally and you will see them bail, or just fly very recklessly, congrats... this is when you start doing your real dammage. until now, youve been forced into long dogfights inbetween which you had 30 seconds to either kill the second jet or kill enemy attack helos, if you are bombing ground targets while establishing airsuperiority they better be worth it, you generally shouldnt have time. this is what your itinerary should be, shoot down jet, 30 seconds to find and kill second jet, if second jet down kill attack helo, if time remaining usually 5 to 10 seconds if your good, go back to airbase rearm and find first jet again and kill it ( aka lather rinse repeat) remember, that pilots have a low tolerance for personal failure, especially good ones, if you are in an F-35 and you get shot down 4 or 5 times in a round against a J-10, you are actually doing pretty good, remember you are stopping him from ravaging your attack helo and other assets, that 20 or 30 point score he has, it's your job to make sure it's not a 100 point score, you'll have next round in the j-10 and youll already have seen him fly knowing his flight habits. So take your lumps like a man, and take one for the team.
Closing notes:
As the fighter pilot you enable the attack helos to do their job as well as the bomber. The attack helo can annhialate armor to the point it is ridiculous and game winning, if there is no enemy jet to stop a good attack helo and no enemy attack helo to bother it as well as limited ground aa, your friendly attack helo should have a score higher than you, fighter clears the way, attack helo brings the wrecking ball. watch how I fly when kelderos and yurigo are in an attack helo, I protect them for a reason. also watch when I'm not on their team, I go after them as a priority. you need to be ablel to reckognize what is doing dammage to your team. if that helo is a problem, take him out, watch the red names that are at the top of the kill count for the enemy, what are they using? a jet? a helo? go after them. A good fighter and attack helo litterally can a make a noob loosey goosey team annihalate a team that is more organised. think about it, they cant cap a flag, it goes neutral I bomb it, attack helos shows up and guards it while killing everything that it sees until a ground squad gets there, if they cant cap a flag, then they can only lose flags, no armor or vehicles are able to operate also, forcing them to walk. do you see where all of the points in this guide come together from the spotting empty units, air supperioity and your priorities all come together? it is for this goal, to become a part of a combined element. a good fighter and helo/bomber are devasting... period, but if you dont have the fighter, your behind the 8 ball and the stack is stacked against you from the start. just think of the assets in this game like you would the food chain, it goes jets, helo, armor, cars, infantry. always make sure you are using your assets, dont run on foot when you have a tank sitting idle at your spawn, who knows, a guy like me might come along and maybe "borrow" your tank helo or jet... remember that and dont be a victim of asset theft, the only person to blame for asset theft is the team it was stolen from. before I forget an easy way to level the playing field sometimes is to steal the enemy jet, easiest way to do this is to just bomb the spot where the jet spawns about 5 seconds before the jet spawns there killing the enemy waiting then flying back around and bailing out, pop your chute at the last second and get in his jet. each map has a different time frame for jet spawns, i suggest you pay attention to that time and take note, most times are around 45 seconds or so but some are as short as 20-25 seconds. think about this tactic, maybe you want to drop a mine in front of your jet spawn just in case some one like to steal jets, maybe if your stealing jets going sniper with the m95 and shooting the pilot out before he takes off is easier. measure, judge then act, reassess and act again if need be. Now as promised heres one of the advanced guides I wrote for another forum a while back, at the end of it is how to do a stratorun, it is the only way I know of to guaruntee losing a jet on your six. I couple of things are redundant but I recommend you read throught the entire post so you dont miss any details, hope you enjoy.
TotalBF2 jet survival guide BY ||3RB||MOBB:
This is a more advanced pointers for Fighter pilots NOT BOMBERS!!! so they can be more effective, everything below has a time and place, if you use the wrong tactic in the wrong place it will be the equivalent to using a screwdriver on a lug nut or a monkey wrench on a nail. Use your head when you fly and dont get mad, when people fly mad they fly like crap. also there will be a f35 specific section at the end of this pointer guide.
-ground aa has a range of 300 feet approx. so fly above this and you should be safe from it, compensate for elevation of ground aa.
-kill ground aa as a priority if it locks onto you, you dont want 2 or three of these shooting at you, make it brutally clear ground aa will not be tolerated. you can triangulate where the locks are coming from by just where you get locked on at. if you cant find a mobile aa, tail a freindly jet from quite a way back and pick off the ground when it lites up, this is a very good way to find mobile aa. people like to sit next to it until you fly by then shoot you in the but after you fly by to eliminate this possible threat, just strafe the aa at the enemy flags, even if its empty. youll be surprised how many times you hit a guy hiding next to it.
-always fly medic. if you go out of bounds once youll understand why... Just do it...
-look behind you every 5 seconds at least, more if possible. also look behind you before you get a rearm, and look behind you just as you get done rearming, this alone will save your but more times than you can count.
-spot the enemy jet first. First spot = first kill, how do you spot him? Well, fly high, and sweep avenues of approach that he will be coming to and from his airfield, dont circle above it even at 800 feet, it's a common spot for more advanced pilots to sweep, tail your wingman or bomber from a higher altitude and far back, you should be doing this tail via mini map so you see where he is, if he gets a tail you should see it, worse case scenario if he gets shot down youll know you just have to nose down and hit after burner to get on him. also your attack helo is a juicy target, monitor it, better yet get them in your squad and tell them to spot the bugger, they should be happy to help you kill the sob.
-Ground aa has a much shorter tone time than a jet, learn to tell the difference in sound and many times you wont even have to look back to see whats shooting at you.
-if you get the enemy jet smoking and you lose sight of him, he will most likely be heading to his airfield for repairs... ambush him.
-use the nose cannon, use the nose cannon, use the nose cannon.
-practice getting nose cannon bullets into windows like the hut at intake on kubra damn. ive killed alot of infantry hiding in the building thinking they were safe.
-When flying a jet, always take out the other jets before taking out ground targets or helos. You will live alot longer if you do this.
- When patroling for other jets, fly high. I know it sounds simple but flying low will get you consitantly killed. Once you kill the enemy jet you know its going to be at least 20 seconds till he respawns, find either the other jet and kill it, if it is down kill the attack helo, if it is down then kill aa or armor in that order, lather rinse repeat and you will be a much better, and organized pilot.
-when you shoot down the other jet, at the time the enemy jet respawns be waiting over the carrier, mind you this isnt to spawn rape since the phalanx can shred your jet to pieces, but just to spot him, once he takes off, follow him until he is out of protective range of the phalanx (essex aa) then engage him. You will do a couple of things, #1 you will get in his head, he'll think you keep spotting him and taking him down first, #2 you will ensure your own survival. You want the other guy to give up mentally or be intimidated, I noticed people fly alot worse and more reckless when they are either angry or wreckless. Dont spawn rape the carrier, let him take off, let him think hes being outclassed, if you kill him on the carrier he'll have a reason to cry fowl, also this will work on any server even ones where uncap attacking is forbidden.
-Dont answer nasty comments while flying, youll undoubtably get locked up and killed while your typing your rebuttle to whatever he's saying about you, get used to insults when you fly, as a matter of fact the cheat accusations and insults generally mean you've arrived as an aviator.
- Keep your flares between you and the enemy jet. alot of people will drop flares while pulling up, or drop flares then pull up, I have bad news for you if you do this, if I keep you in my bottom edge of my targeting circle I wont even lose a lock on you since your flares will fall down away from you while you start to pull up. You either want to be already pointed up when you drop them or pointed down, and try to fly back around through your own flares if you are in any other jet than the F35. If you dont have flares, try locking up a hostile helo or if you are chasing a jet in gun mode lock him up, he will most likely drop flares... giveing you a countermeasure also.
-Dont ever, never, never never chase the same jet as your wingman, Youll hit eachother and looking like fricken morons while the enemy pilot laughs his but off.
-dont ever never, never fire missles if enemy jet is chasing your wingman, youll more than likely hit your wingman. only fire if you know your angle is good and you wont his your wingman... better yet use your guns, and use your lock tone only to spook the enemy jet to break off.
-this meant to be used on easily rattled pilots, this works well on mouse and keyboard pilots also, you can tell by the squirlly way they fly, lock him up when he is in bombing runs at the last second and watch him panic and hit a tree, same holds true for rearms, when he goes to rearm, lock him up just before he gets to the runway, some times people cant resist the urge to fly straight and get those new bombs giving you a great opportunity, second they might pull away engaging you with a partial munition load, either way you win.
-use your bomb mode when sneaking up on a jet and gun him until he knows your there, when he starts to break then lock him up, its free dammage without a missle, exploit it!!!
-never use missles on attack helos, this prompts them to evade and raises the chance of you smacking into them. Use your guns IN BOMB MODE and aim for any part of the glass canopy, he will blow up before he can get a turn off.
-transport helos can be taken down with guns only every time if you come at them from behind and at a forty five degree angle. since they are moving forward it gives you more time to put more bullets in them, same for attack helos but they blow up so easy you dont need it. IF you need to use a missle on a transport helo to finish it off on your gun run, either fire it head on, from the rear or if he flys above 300 feet fly under the helo straight up and launch a couple of missles while gunning, be ready to break so the wreckage doesnt kill you, missles always hit black hawks and cobras when you fire them straight up into the under bellies. BAD news for helo pilots eh?
-DO NOT CUT YOUR THROTTLE!!! its a bad habit and can turn into a crutch, if you do this the enemy pilot might over shoot you once but he will circle around and be on you again in seconds, worse is the second time you do it he will use guns on you and kill you.
-F35 SPECIFIC SURVIVAL INFO
-cruising altitude should never be below 300 to 250 feet. you need that altitude to get to stratorun altitude in time. if you bomb look behind you first, then bomb at steep angles then imediatley pull back up to altitude to reduce your exposure time.
-rearming repairing:
when you your go in for a rearm repair, not only look behind you but dont fly straight and level and low, fly high and drop straight down to the carrier,look behind you then pull up to get the rearm, the second your done pull straight up and look behind you again, get to crusing altitude and continue sweeping, this reduces your exposure time at low altitude.
-what to do if you are damaged,
Dont rearm repair right aways, fly at at least 600 feet while your flares recharge first, when you get flares back then fly in for repairs, be paranoid for an amush at your airbase and do a high altitude sweep first before making a repair pass. airbase ambush is a common finishing tacic.
-F35 is a hit and run fighter, dont get into turning contests, if this happens start climing while turning or evading and strato run away to reengage. when you pounce on people you should be above them and use your guns first in bomb mode as not to alert them then when they start to evade lock them up. this way you do dammage every time regardles of missles.
-killing an experience j10 is a 2 part process:
Get it in your head that a good j10 pilot will not be killed most times on your first attack, what you want to do is set him up for a 2 part kill. First part is sneaking up on him in gun mode from high above him. use your guns!!! shoot him when he levels out for longer than a second, try to make every bulllet hit with out missing, the way hell know hes being hit is if a tracer flys by his canopy, so dont miss right? when he evades lock him up, you might get lucky and hit him with a missle but lets plan for the worst. lets say it misses and by this point he should be smoking, that was your goal, you just want to get him smoking. pull up and get to altitude and strato run away , now hes damaged and you know hes going to be either looking for you, or repairing, do a high altitude sweep over his airfield, then drop down to where you can barely see the ground, then pull up another 50 feet, now you shoud be able to spot him as he goes in for a rearm repair, pounce on him again with guns and that should be the end of him. If the airfield becomes too hot or you do it too many times, you will have to reengage him in the air for the second pass, try to do it in a timely manner to be able to catch him with his flares spent.
-MUST fly medic. No if ands or buts, essential part of survival in this jet.
-Save at least 80 percent of your after burner at all times, you need this to stratorun away from missles if you get locked up.
-THe following is known as a stratorun:
You can out run missles in the F35. To do so you will need to be at 800 feet to 850 feet tapping your after burner in short bursts while staying in bounds or close enough in bounds to be able to get back into the map. Number one, always fly medic. this lets you heal your self giving you precious seconds to get back in bounds. first of all you need to fly relatively high at all times, at least 350 to 400 feet high, this alows you to nose up and get to altitude, ideally once you reach 700 feet and you start tapping the after burner the missle will start to fall behind, at 800, 850 the missle will fall away substantially. This is very important!!! dont look behind you when you get past 500 feet, you dont have too, just start tapping your after burner, and focus on staying at 800 to 850, if you look behind you you will go to high or too low and die. while getting to altitude you want to stall his lock on you if possible while climbing to your altitude, once at 700 start afterburning to get away from him, remember to tap the after burner so you dont burn it all up too fast. also remember, save much of yoru after burner for this maneuver, it is the only thing that will always save you each and every time. Try to save your flares for when youare already going upwards, dont break upwards while droping flares or he might not even break lock on you, try to be flying in loops while gaining alttitude like a split s works pretty good but change it upso you dont get predictable, at the change of direction in your split s is a good time to drop flares since youare pointed upwardes, if he didnt get a lock on you and your at 700 feet, punch it, you should start hauling @s$ in that f35 if the tone is still there after 3 seconds drop your flares the missles should drop off, and the enemy jet should be long gone, if you dont have flares you will need to maintain that insane speed at 800 850 for approximately 4 to 8 seconds, it feels like an eternity but it beats dying right? now that you lost the enemy jet and shook his missles drop back down and fight right? WRONG!!! you dont have flares back yet buddy, wait until your flares recharge, until then fly around 600 feet just to be safe in a corner of the map where no one goes until your flares recharge. I am more than happy to demonstrate this tommorow when I will be playing, I WILL warn you now though, practice in an empty server just flying at 800 and 850 feet just tapping your affter burner until your sound makes a wierd high pitch engine noise the wooosh of the jet will sound more like a weeeeeeesh!!!( p.s. i know i sound like a big homo) thats the sound you want since that is the ideal speed for dropping missles. once you get that down start practicing it, it will take one maybe two days to get it down but after that you will not look at the F35 the same way again.WARNING!!! dalian plant has a very low ceiling, do not fly over 800-820 or you will go out of control, try to out run missles on this map at around 800 and dont deviate, this is a great practice map, if you can out run missles on dalian plant, you can do it on all the maps. also when nosing up on dragon valley, try to find a patch of blue sky behind your altimeter, so you can you your altitude.
-if you zoom your map out while flying you can usually see the white lines around your field of vision, telling you which way your going so you know which way to turn to get back in bounds, when I say zoom out I mean the full screen map. also you can use your compass heading at the top of your hud in the jet but this is more difficult.
Once again this a guide for fighters, I am in my own mind, a horrible bomber pilot, i dont have the turning radiuses down, I find they are missle magnets and they are so sluggish to bank, my personal advice to you if you want to become a better fighter pilot is to stay out of the bombers all together if you plan to become a better fighter pilot it makes a big difference when you learning. also keep calm, dont let another pilot get you mad or frustrated, youll start getting sloppy, when the insults fly (and they will) dont get into it, if your evenly matched only taunt him to get him angry, or make him reckless, at most type in a lol when you shoot him down and get a flame kill. DOnt swear and keep it short if you do typesomething, I still advise you to keep your mouth shut while in the air, talk all the smack you want on the ground, but if your on the ground maybe you should focus more on shooting him down right?
additional little tricks:
placeing your lock reticle, this might seem like common knowledge but most people pull up when they get locked, and flares fall down away, if you put the bottom edge just barely on your target and give your self some space between you and your opponent, if he pops flares in level flight or just starting to pull up you wont lose your lock...at all. It doesnt always work but it is a nice tool to use when you dont want to engage in long dogfights, it works great on F-35's and on relativley inexperienced pilots.
another thing is your ping. I finally found a couple of good west coast servers to fly on where I have less than a 30 ping and OMG what a world of difference it makes. For some reason on these servers I can turn a little sharper and my missles hit with a way, way, way higher percentage. Before playing on these servers I generally played on servers where I had anywhere from a 60 to 75 ping and I thought that was fine.
This explains more than one engagement I've had where I could swear guys with low pings could out turn a fighter and their missles had uber accuracy
Bombing:
it depends on if you want to drop bombs on. I use the dual bomb drop method because I prioritize tanks with bombs or neutral flags. Tanks take two bombs to kill and I dont like having to make two passes on them so, that being said I strafe all other targets, even apcs. Apcs go up like roman candles from a steady stream of fire from the cannon on the aircraft, moreso from bombers. I have found for some reason the nose cannon on the Bombers is stronger than the cannon on the fighters, you can kill apcs easy with it and damage tanks even. try not to waste your bombs on soft targets like cars, boats, helos, planes on the deck, ground aa when you can use your nose cannon. Youll need fewer rearms and you'll be able to do alot more damage. I can make it so a car cannot leave a flag and if they take the one peace of armor thats when I drop my bomb, the whole time I will hit their ground AA and while a fly by I will spot infantry and even strafe them, asuming of course there is no enemy jets in the sky, ground attack is a cake walk.
But to anser your question I'll go over how to drop bombs in the 2x bomb method since if you can do that you can easily drop singe bombs, here goes. practice doing this with the F-35 since it is the easiest to bomb with and use that as a reference.
step #1
You dont want to be turning or pulling up or pushing the nose down when you drop bombs, establish your self in a straight flying line of at least 45 to 50 degrees.
step #2
use the center of your screen should be the TOP of the verticle line that is in the bottom half of your bombing hud... NOT THE BOTTOM OF THAT LINE... mmm...k?
step #3
when you think your dinging the target with both bombs start looking behind you to see where your bombs land... if your second bomb over shoots your either pulling up too soon or your angle of attack is too shallow...maybe both. you want to wait for the second clunk of that second bomb before you make any change in direction because guess what? if you change direction... so do your bombs. when you get the basics down, then move on to slinging bombs into hangers or door ways, if you aim small, you will miss small.
try this as a drill, fly straight down at a target from around 400 feet, absolutly strait down fly straight and release your bombs from around 200 feet, I bet they fall in a tight group one on top of the other, thats why its important to come in at the steepest angle possible. once you master stationary targets you will have to lead moving tanks and or apcs.
Just so you dont lose focus, bombs are your plan b, your bread and butter is that nose cannon, it allows you to loiter for much longer, remember... If you bomb either take out a cluster of troops taking a flag or armor, ground aa, cars and boats are a waste. If you want to screw with a ground aa bubba I climb to 600 feet and drop both bombs from a straight dive, he never hears me or sees me just two bombs right on his head with no exposure on my part. clarification: that last thing about bombing an AA position is more like a party trick, NOT your bread and butter ok? hope that helps.
The key point of having both bombs hit the same spot is not to pull up or change direction until you hear the second clunk.
I will say this in respect to each aircraft:
once you get used to the F-35, the F-18 aiming point for bomb drops is lower on the bombing hud than the f35 almost half way down that verticle line on your hud if not more.
j10: is about the same as the f35 if not a hair lower on the verticle hud line, but the problem with this jet is it is very unstable, the trick is to fly in a straight line with this jet until you hear the second clunk
mig 29: similar to the f18 aim point but just a hair higher.
A question I answered in a post on totalbf2 a while back:
The fighter should be sweeping all airspace, jets first, then attack helos when you know both jets are down, and ground AA needs to be supressed if they are engaging, 1 or 2 ground aa is a nuisance 4 or 5 is a pain in the ***, discourage them and think of it as pest control you cant eliminate it but you can put a nasty bleed on the enemy tickets by killing AA positions, A small tip here, the general ceiling for ground AA is 300 feet. fly above that and you should be ok, some AA sits at a high elevations so compensate for that, like the mobile aa at the top of the hill on construction site on kubra dam.
If you do your job well in the fighter, the bomber and attack helo on your team are going to be the ones who do the real damage, think of an mec chopper or cobra with nothing shooting at it. If you play in a server with me and fly the attack helo youll notice me peppering the hell out of ground aa and the enemy helo will "go away" withing 5 to 10 seconds of you spotting it, even if I dont see the helo on my map when you spot it, I'll see you flashing telling me you spotted something, now what would a freindly attack helo spot that it cant kill? either a jet or anoother attack helo.
BTW the SU-30 is by far and large the best bomber, but it's still a chew toy for a fighter, the hit box is really large so it's as easy to shoot down as the f-15 with guns...
A series of questions that someone asked me once and is very good info:
to answer your questions in order hurricane here we go:
1. Check your ping, you dont want to fly in servers with a ping over 80 preferably under that. Im going to seperate your first question into two parts...evading missles from jets, and missles from ground AA.You can tell a definite difference from ground aa lock ons and other aircraft locking on to you. Ground AA lock times are VERY short... stupid short in fact when compared to jets lock ons and start recognizing the difference, because you will want to deal with each differently.
-Missles from jets-
Now in a j10 or f18 your pretty much untouchable but lets just say you are doing something wrong, Your most likely popping your flares too early, wait for a solid tone before popping your flares, and break while looking behind you, countering your oponents every move, if he reacts to your last move wait till hes in the middle of banking to reengage then break back in the opposite direction and continue in that direction you'll lose most people with this one. The kicker is wait untilll your fully locked onto before droppinng the flares, sometimes it's just a jet coming straight at you, in which case dont waste your flares, let him waste his missles hes not going to hit you... unless you fly perfectly straight at him.
-missles from ground AA-
I have a feeling this is what is biting you in the a$$. once youve learned to identify this lock by the very short lock on time, pop your flares the exact second it goes solid. It takes a split second after he gets lock for his missles to track properly, if you do it this way youll buy your self enough time to get out of his lock on range which is approx 300 feet in any direction. While your flares are recharging fly above this to take ground AA out of the equation which you should be doing anyways since there are other fighters up looking for you. Ground AA tracks rediculously well, A mobile aa will take down a jet easily if your not paying attention or you pop your flares late.
Now if you are getting locked up by ground AA, I can actually make it so ground aa missles hit you if I get lock even if you pop flares, at least one of the missles will hit you. You have to listen for how long it takes for lock to get on to you, if it seems almost instantaniously its probably ground AA pop flares the second it goes steady tone, ground aa actually takes a split second after they get tone to lock correctly... use that info to yoru knowledge. I have a feeling what is killing you is mobile AA.
question #2
Your flying too low, altitude is your freind, also equally important look behind you regularly and dont fly flat and level for longer than a second...ever. I take down so many people with guns in j10s it's ridiculous. For starters you know he has to rearm and repair sometime, dont be predictable and circle at 700 feet over his runway, if hes decent he'll check over his airstrip for you time to time since it's a common place for the enemy to loiter, every one has a flight pattern, notice his and exploite them, is he really good at attack but never looks behind him? gun him down then with no lock. Does he cut his throttle over the airstrip alot? ambush him, does he always engage your wingman? tail your wingman from high above (bait him) Does he cut his throttle to maintain lock while engaging yoru wingman? Hes toest, missles and or guns. This is the key to winning in the air, spotting first and there are alot of moving parts, but in the end you need to identify what your enemy is not doing and use that against him, also identify where and when you get locked up, what could you be doing wrong? critique yourself at the end of every round...HONESTLY and truthfully. Try flying high to begin with and only focus on other jets, not ground targets, I bet youll start living longer since you will be more focused, always engage a jet if you see it, unless you think his wingman is tailing him, its like a big rock paper scissors game, mix it up a bit and youll do fine, its when you lather rinse repeat any tactic you get in trouble.
question #3
Hes probably timing his flares right, try firing one missle to prompt his flare deployment, if he doesnt he'll get hit. if he does pop flares fire off a salvo of three missles 1 extra missle for good measure so he cant bail from a plane on fire...important on wake. one other thing, if you lock onto him at around 500 feet he can easily climb to 750 and out run your missles... I do this all the time just make sure you have after burner. also make sure your launch angle isnt too extreme, compensate by leading him with your missle fire, if hes above you trying to climb use the bottom edge of your missle lock circle, also on some planes like the mig 29 and f18 missle wont launch at all if you dont do this
question #4
This is easy... THE fighter isnt doing his damn job, simple as that. Bombers are fodder for any decent pilot, the only defense the bomber has is to climb and only come down for targets but he has to rearm alot and he gets spotted alot by infantry when they get tired of getting bombed by him, pay attention to the flashing players when you here enemy plane spotted, you cant see the plane alot of the time but you will see the freindly flashing that spotted him on your minimap.
question #5
I have a logitech so I feel that if I try to help with this it would be purely speculation. As long as you have a twist handle and you have your yaw/pitch factor maxed out with your sensitivity, that would be where to start, and map your rear view to your view hat, chase view to be precise but its nice to have the standard rear view also to spot infantry on the ground for a follow up pass.
I hope that helps bud, alot of this I regrett to say is getting a feel for this and that. But the biggest part is you need to be able to do 10 different things at once with out hitting a mountain side or tree. One more tip that will save you alot when you get more seasoned:
-check your mini map for freindly jets before rearming, circle if you have to but you wont smack a freindly jet if you do this
-If your wingman is on a jet, dont engage the same jet, your more than likely going to hit each other
-Plan what your going to engage or suppress before you even get up in the air. it should go... fighter then bomber then ground aa then attack helo then black hawk and then armor. some maps like wake island the black hawk is a way bigger threat than the cobra.
-spectate other pilots in third person view who you know are good and just write the round off to training. maybe join their squad and pick their brain via voip, I have people do it to me all the time, I usually invite people who call me a hacker to spectate me and I'll show them what I'm doing.
There is no silver bullet, only tools to add to the tool box, if you use a screw driver on a nut your going to fail, and vice versa a wrench on a screw and youll fail you have to be able to assess and reassess constantly all while not smacking a tree and killin the enemy so unfortunatly alot of this is practicing, however you can work smarter or harder and maybe a bit of both, compartmentalize one thing at a time and they will all come together, dont tackle it all at once, I suggest working on taking down other jets first and yes, the best defense is a good offense
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||3RB||MOBB Stats:
http://bf2s.com/player/46267545/
