Great guide, I agree with the grand majority of stuff, but felt there needed to be some mention of things I disagree with or at least feel the need to add onto.
Combat: Jet vs. Jet
Never cut your throttle. Airspeed is your lifeline, and it is not worth wasting afterburners to get back up to speed.
Generally speaking, very true. However, sometimes it is a necessity, but must be properly prepared for, otherwise it's a death sentence. You only really want to drop throttle as an evasive maneuver against a jet with superior maneuverability, and usually only when you have no flares to fall back on. Basically, the only times I've found it useful is against a jet with superior maneuverability, which is tailing you.
The idea is to break hard in one direction with afterburners (to lead them with the trails), break back hard in the other direction with afterburners, then drop off afterburners, reverse throttle and pull hard the other direction again. What happens is, they follow you through the 2 hard turns via your trail, but the non-afterburner turn gets a slower reaction, meaning that you are dropping throttle when you are just outside their view, so they don't see it coming. You keep to your turn and we can assume they will follow, but by the time they get you back into view, you are rapidly dropping speed, and by the time they can get behind you again, they've overpassed you. It's important to use the external views when executing this maneuver, so you can know when to expect they will overtake you, so you can know when to put the throttle back on and engage. Generally speaking, this is something you will pull against a J-10 while in an F-35B, and even if you manage to get behind them and engage, more than likely your missiles will all miss anyways, but it can be used to evade without the need to just completely bail out of the jet. A good J-10 pilot cannot be outmaneuvered when flying the F-35B, but they can be tricked.
Utilize your MG’s vs. enemy jets flying straight/slowly in combination with rockets. MG’s in turns are pretty useless except to alert the enemy of your presence. Sometimes you can get some good shots off, but you have to fire ahead (read turn faster) then your opponent to do this in a turn. You should always use your MGs if you can though, just be aware they won’t do damage unless you get good shots in. The F35 being a slow tub, really has a hard time firing a head of a jet it can’t even keep up with. That said, use your MGs wisely so you don’t alert everyone of your presence with bad shots, but lace your opponents with fire when you have a good chance of success.
An addendum to this... I agree that MGs are generally useless in the "chasing the tail" dogfight, except in certain situations. Tailing an enemy jet even for 5-10 seconds, you can get an idea of what maneuvers they like to use. The split-S, or any other vertical evasive maneuver is great to use the MGs on. If your jet can pull up harder and faster than the enemy jet, be it just a superior jet for maneuverability, or by using afterburners, you can get ample lead on your MGs to rip them in half. Any vertical loop maneuver leaves you following a steady path up, limited by your ability to pull up. An enemy just just has to know what to expect from your plane, lead you while you pull up into your loop or half-loop, and let the MGs go. This is why I only use vertical loop maneuvers when in a superior jet like the J-10, and when I have afterburners to guarantee I can't get caught in enemy MG fire. Yes, vertical loops are great for avoiding AA fire (unless you are in an F-35B), but are offer up an extremely predictable flight path that any good pilot with more maneuverability can take advantage of. They are more or less useless though in horizontal loops, because it is easy to bank left or right in such a loop when your altitute is not rapidly changing. (and thus you're not rapidly losing control)
Do not fly straight at an enemy chopper or away from one. You are quite easily TV’ed by any good gunner. A fast barrel roll is enough to evade them on the way by while you plan your next attack angle.
Beause of the dumb-fire missile techniques you mentioned, I'd have to disagree. You have to be very unlucky to be TV'd by an enemy chopper, unless you really just come back at them 8 different times and get them ample opportunities to set up a shot. I for one, in all my hours in the sky, have never been TV'd, and never TV'd an enemy jet, piloted competently. If they are doing a 180 and coming back at you, by the time they level out, you have about 1 second or less to line up a shot, and by that time, they are probably too close to take the shot. The day I get TV'd in the air, is the day I quit playing BF2. And to be TV'd by a chopper after flying away... well, why would you ever stay completely level, never turning, after flying past anything?
Do not loose rockets into an enemy jet that is chasing a friendly jet. Rather, use Joy2Key to spot the enemy jet for your ally so he knows he is being followed. If your ally gets shot down, then feel free to waste the enemy.
Very situational, I would not say never do this. It depends on what plane you are using, what plane you are chasing, and whether or not the enemy plane has used it's flares. If I am in a J-10, following an F-35, chasing a friendly plane.. I'll get lock, wait for a second to see if they drop flares, and fire off 1 rocket. By the time that rocket impacts or would have, you'll know if they have flares. If they don't, fire the second missile and finish the job. If they do, re-lock then finish the job.
However, if you are in an F-35B, chasing a J-10, chasing a friendly plane, more than likely, no matter when you shoot your missiles, they will most likely miss, and when they do, flares or not, they'll have a much more likely chance to hit the friendly jet. In that situation, there is little you can do but keep following and wait for them to break off/destroy the friendly, or just break off yourself and find something else to do.
Combat: Fighter Jets and Bombing
Note: Don’t use single bomb mode in the bomber, it is @#$@ annoying!
I prefer it. It gives me 2 bombing runs in the bomber, as opposed to 1 before I have to return to rearm. 1 bomb can still kill 5 infantry, and tapping the alternate fire-key twice to drop the full load is no big deal as long as you expect it, and account for the slight delay.
Bombing Priorities
I'd say this is also something that varies a lot. If I'm on wake, and I'm patrolling the area between a friendly flag and enemy flag, I'll keep in mind the flags. If the USMC has the beach and southwest-most flag, and I have to choose between a buggy, a tank and a small group of infantry, I'll usually go for the buggy. That buggy is most likely to break through the lines and get to the airfield, posing a threat to my ability to rearm, and respawn if necessary, so that will be my top priority. Even if an AA turret is armed, so long as I have flares ready, I'll go after the buggy. I know the tank won't pose a threat to capping that airfield flag before the buggy can, nor the troops, so the buggy it is. After that, the AA, then the tank, then the infantry. If however they only have the southwest-most flag, and the flag being threatened is the beach, I'll go for the tank instead of the buggy, as most likely the infantry between the beach and the airfield will be able to stop the buggy in time. There is a lot of information you have to process basically instantly, when choosing targets. You have to keep in mind what you have to bomb, what you don't. What you can guarantee to kill on the first pass, what you can't. Maybe that tank is guarded by some trees that might stop your second bomb from landing, so maybe you should MG the buggy instead, then deal with the tank from a different side/angle of attack.
There is no static list of what priority you take on bombing. Some targets are best left un-bombed because your bombs are needed elsewhere, but some targets should be attacked and killed with MGs first, before you bomb anything. It varies from map to map, situation to situation, based on who has what flag, what targets are available, how many bombs you have left, how long it will take to rearm, how long it will take to totally rearm, what other threats you might have (an enemy jet), and generally what might be best to spend your time on. It all comes from experience, and takes time to develop good judgement on what to attack, and how to attack it. Also, you have to weigh the risks of friendly damage before deciding what to do, and how to do it. Bombing is a very fine art, as is using a plane in general, and it takes a lot of experience and quick decision making skills, as well as quick reaction times and control over the plane, which is all reflected in how you choose to go about bombing, or attacking in general.
Next, if my ground radar gives me nothing, and my skies are still clear, I will start strafing runs on neutral flags, and common spawn points of nearby enemy flags. I will not base rape the enemy airfield unless they are being sassy bitches and spawn camping us all game.
Some maps you really have no choice, unless you just want to get shot down. On wake, if you want a chance at staying alive as USMC, if all J-10s are down and the PLA holds the airfield, you have no better priority than raping the J-10 spawn and nearby AA. This guarantees you can stay in the air, as the only threat is AA, and gives the friendly force an easier time getting on-land, staying on land, and taking more flags, specifically the airfield. The J-10 is a HUGE threat on Wake, and the best way to deal with it, is to never let it take off in the first place. An F-35B, no matter how good the pilot, cannot handle 1, much less 2 good J-10 pilots. The lynchpin in getting the PLA on lockdown on Wake, depends on being able to ground the J-10s and keep them grounded. Nothing is of higher priority to an F-35B pilot.
Bombing Stationary AA
Like I said already, MG AA first if you suspect someone is on it or near it (ground radar will show if someone is actually on it, but sometimes it glitches out and shows a hot AA site when nobody is there all game long). If you don’t receive a kill right away (~20 rounds of MG) then release a bomb and it will get the bastard.
You also need to weigh the cost of using a bomb (or two) on an AA turret to kill 1 infantry. Destroying an AA turret with MGs take 2 seconds of constant fire, and it's down for a good 20-30 seconds. If that infantry just wants to stand around and wait for the AA to respawn, great! You'll just kill it again as soon as it respawns. I'd have to argue that there is rarely ever a reason to bomb an AA turret, unless you just don't have the altitude or angle of attack to destroy the turret with MGs.
Jeeps can be tricky to bomb, but the easiest method is the conventional one, but also consider their fast velocity and accommodate for that in earlier releases if the vehicle is heading towards you, or bombing further ahead of the vehicle if it is traveling away from you.
Same as AA turretts, there is rarely a reason to ever bomb a jeep, unless you just don't have the option of MGing it, and can't afford the time to take a second pass to setup an MG kill.
Combat: Bombers
Actual Bombing
Regarding actual bombing, if at all possible you want your laser-guided missile co-pilot to take out single targets rather then stringing your bombs out for one kill.
Which is where the option of dropping 1 bomb in a bomber comes in handy. While it can be annoying, that 1 bomb can kill a single non-MBT target, and is a great backup plan in case your LGM co-pilot misses, loses lock, the LGM bugs, or any other reason that he doesn't kill it. Right as you are about to pull up, you can loose that 1 bomb and kill the intended single target, without having to use all 5 bombs.
Evasion: Jets vs. Jets
I'd venture to say there is no static guide to avoid another jet. It varies entirely from situation to situation, considering what jet you are in, what jet they are in, the altitude you are at, the altitude they are at, whether you have friendly cover, other ground-based threats, other air-based threats, available terrain to use to your advantage, etc. Just like bombing, there is no set-in-stone guide to evading another jet. I would say sticking to something like the split-S maneuver as a default evasive action will get you killed against a good pilot the second time you use it. If someone uses it on me once, and breaks me for a second, I guarantee the second time they try it I'll be MGing them out of the sky.
This is another thing that comes down to situational awareness and experience. You have to constantly mix in up, and know what kind of maneuvers you can use to break someone, especially maneuvers that don't involve wasting flares. I do a lot of elevation changes, banking, rolls mid-bank/climb, and basically try to use their jet's weaknesses against them. If you know that rolling over and pulling a half-loop while losing elevation and gaining speed will break a tail because they are in mid-climb in a jet that doesn't climb well (like the F-35), you do it! You need to keep in mind always your jets capabilities and weigh it against a tailing jet, to know what kind of evasion will work best. Against a J-10 in an F-18, vertical maneuvers and quick directional changes work best, because of the J-10s sluggish response. While it can bank and climb harder than any other jet, it has the slowest response time, which you can use against it. Also, you have to keep in mind the kind of maneuvers that break missiles off of you best... the F-18 climbs out of missile locks best, whereas a J-10 can do a quick bank and roll over to break nearly any missile or group of missiles.
It is not always important to completely lose a tailing jet. If you can get them to waste all their AA missiles and they have to go back to rearm, you effective force them to break off of you, rather than losing the tail. In some situations, it is easier and better to force them to waste their AA missiles, rather than breaking them off of you, and letting them remain a threat. If you force them off of you, and force them to rearm, then you open up an opportunity for you to get onto their 6, and force a threat on them, without their ability to fight back.
Flares
One thing to keep in mind is not necessarily diving with the flares, but keeping the flares between you and the source of the AA long enough to either get out of range, or roll hard enough to get out of their line-of-sight. A good technique to use against ground-based targets is doing a quick dive, release flares to "sling" them upwards, then climbing back up to mingle with the flares. This way, you can keep the same general level of altitude, without the worry of the flares falling below you and opening you open to the threat before you can get out of range. This also works well in any vertical or horizontal "climb".
Rearming
The J10 will rearm one bomb and 5 missiles in one runway pass, unless you go really slow which is BAD.
The F35B and Mig29 will fully reload, as will the bombers, F18 etc.
Rearming is actually a property of the runway, not the plane. While the J-10 will only reload 5 AA missiles and 1 bomb on a full-speed pass on the PLA runway, so will the F-35B. But, if you reload the J-10 on the USMC carrier, you will get a full reload on 1 full-speed pass, just like the F-35B. The same goes for the F-18 on a PLA runway, you will only reload 5 AA missiles and 1 bomb in a single full-speed pass.
Another thing to note is you only need to slow down to about 800-850mph to get a full reload off of the PLA runway, which you can't consider "really slow".
The PLA runway is just a tad bit too short in terms of the area you can reload in. The other runways are fine for a full reload in a single pass.
Again, great guide, just felt a few things needed mentioning. There is way too much information to really make a fully-fledged aviator's guide, but this will at least give people a good start.