Mysteries of handheld AA

[Tarranauha200]

I have been playing PR for a long time. Only things I cant do is fixed wing aircraft and handheld AA.

I know the basic thing, wait for lock and launch. But now some people have been telling me about the missile locking in mid-flight. I have noticed that sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt.

Can you tell me more about this mid-air locking and how to properly use it.

[Mikemonster]

It's random isn't it. When playing Taliban/Insurgent I just attribute the random nature to poor training and lack of maintenance/ageing.

I've heard some rumours but don't really want to share in case it's an exploit.

[Tarranauha200]

Could it be that the aircraft must be moving in such way that the missile can "see" it for couple seconds to get lock mid-air.

Is it posible to aim at the aircraft for 90% of the lock time and launch missile. Would it then take only like 1 second for the missile to lock in mid-air. I heard some people saying that you just hipfire it when looking at enemy aircraft.

[Xander[nl]]

It's not entirely the AA's fault; the flares in BF2 work in mysterious ways. They work most of the time, but sometimes simply fail. I've seen choppers evade missiles for entire rounds, and I've seen them pop 18 flares and still get hit.

You can train with AA for better odds, but in the end it's always still down to luck.

[Von_Gnome]

I think in vBF2 if you aimed at a "friendly flare" then the missile would target the closest enemy in some strange way...

[lukeyu2005]

To be honest the only kill i've ever scored with the AA was on Kokan when a Kowia came in really low and close our compound. like he was flying 5m off the ground. And i just poped around the corner and put one right in it's face.

Other wise shoulder launched AA are just about impossible. The Manpad AA is better.

[Tarranauha200]

Man-portable air-defense systems (MANPADS or MPADS) are shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles (SAMs).

Lol

I think that the best use of those devices is to hit blufor aircraft when they landing(its allowed on NwA).

[Dev1200]

AA missile explodes if it goes near a vehicle, friendly or not, locked or not

[Stealthgato]

At ranges under 300m, MANPADS are very effective. After that they tend to go straight and not even give a damn about the supposedly locked target.

[crot]

Sometimes I dont even see the missile trail after those 300m when I get a lock, not even the rocket. It just evaporates. Happened to me twice today on Jabal al burj. Thats good advice, Stealth.

[Rhino]

Handheld AA really isn't that hard to use once you know how and once you understand how it truly works you can use it to your own advantage.

For starters let me explain how seeking works in BF2. To start with there are two types of signature, heat and laser. Heat is used by every air vehicle and the flares and its what AA missiles lock onto and what makes the boxes on the HUD of an AA weapon. Laser signatures are what the SOFLAM uses, and in vBF2 are attached to the vehicles themselves like the heat signatures are attached to aircraft, but in vBF2 only air to ground missiles from fighter-bombers can lock onto them. Now while different weapons lock onto the different signatures, how either weapon behaves with these signatures is pretty much the same.

Basically you have two stages of weapon locking, which is first HUD locking, then after firing, weapon locking. This may seem strange but the HUD locking dose nothing more than fire the correct weapon state, it dose not control where the missile will go or what target it will lock onto once fired. The reason why HUD locking needs to be done is firing a weapon without a HUD lock, your basically firing an un-armed weapon which has no tracking what so ever and will just fly strait, or off in a random direction or w/e depending on the deviation code and other factors (in the future we may even make the missile not explode if launched without a lock due to a common exploit with firing the weapon non-locked currently). Also the HUD locking process can tell the difference between friendly and enemy vehicles, with a big "X" over friendly targets and not letting you lock onto them., reason for telling you this will come apparent later.

Once you have a HUD lock and then fired the weapon, you fire a weapon that will track the closest signature of the type it locks onto (heat or laser). Now the closest signature might not actually be the one you locked onto on the HUD. Most of the time it will be but some times there might be a flare or some other signature that is closest to the target in the "Locking Field of View", aka "Locking Cone", aka "Locking Angle". If this is the case, the missile will go for that target and not the one you want it to go for. What might surprise you is once the missile has been fired, it has no idea what team the missile belongs to and will go for ANY target, friendly or foe. A good example I'm sure many of you have seen is in vBF2, you have a J-10 chasing a F-35B, and you fire at the J-10 and the missile misses the J-10, what dose the missile do next? Yep that's right, it goes after your friendly F-35B and kills it... Now while that scenario isn't common in PR due to our missiles having a much larger detonation radius, so a missile is unlikely to miss an aircraft like that by a fraction like it can in vBF2 and then go after the next closet target in its FOV once passing its original target. How ever this factor still applies to many things in PR. For example if you have two choppers in the sky, one friend one foe, the friendly is closest to you but you lock onto the enemy which is slightly further away, you shoot and the missile once fire, will slam into the friendly chopper. One area you can exploit this factor to your own advantage is with the flare system, where you can fire at a flare, and depending of the angle of the flare and your launch point and the aircraft you want to shoot down, you can get the missile to initially lock onto the flare, miss the flare as it wont explode on the flare, then go after the aircraft you want to shoot down. This takes a lot of skill to do but if done right, it gives the pilot so little warning that there is nothing he can do about it, since the missile is so close, at top speed and even if he pops flares and the missile locks onto them, the flares are so close to him that the missile has an even bigger target to lock onto although might make the missile explode slightly off to the side, but still causing significant damage but chances are, the pilot will not be able to react in time if you do that. What mainly determine if you can pull this off or not is if the missile can turn onto its new target in time which with the speed of the missiles is not something easy to do in PR.

As for "missile locking after launch", tbh I think that is people just confusing the missile being able to lock onto a new target after missing the first, like with the flares. You need to lock onto a target before you can fire, otherwise your just firing a missile which can not lock, period.

Now how you can use this to your advantage is knowing about the locking cone and other things, you can angle your initial fire from the HUD lock away from the target, possibly slightly leading it and or, away from other signatures in order for your missile to track the right target. For example if you have that situation I pointed out before, where you have two choppers in the sky, friendly and enemy, with the friendly one above you but closer to you but still in your locking cone, what you can do to somewhat help avoid your missile going after your friendly chopper is aim downwards, away from your friendly chopper but still keeping the enemy one in your HUD locking cone (ie, the HUD of the weapon is still trying to lock onto it), once locked, fire, your missile will first be heading down, away from the target but then will turn up to hit it and with any luck not seeing the friendly chopper.

Anyways hope that helps some of you, the rest of the Dev team hate my AA skillz

[Cassius]

A manpad is primarily to deal with Helicopters. I am not sure but I dont think they can launch a supersonic missile against a figterjet.

[Rhino]

A manpad is primarily to deal with Helicopters. I am not sure but I dont think they can launch a supersonic missile against a figterjet.

Just taking a look at the Stingers history and I'm seeing quite a few fixed wing kills, including supersonic aircraft such as the Mig-21 and Mig-23 etc?

FIM-92 Stinger - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Murkey]

Thanks for the info Rhino, once I've got enough footage I may make a 101 tutorial for the AA kit as it's rare to see them used effectively.

My advice to would be AA kit users is: Have lots of ammo available, predict the targets flight path, fire then move and mostly pray to the deities of your choice.

I've only ever got a couple of kills against jets with AA kits myself. Must keep practising...

Cheers, Murkey.

[BloodyDeed]

Thanks for the long and detailed explanation Rhino. Experienced something like this while gaming but nice to read this from the developer point of view.

[TheComedian]

(in the future we may even make the missile not explode if launched without a lock due to a common exploit with firing the weapon non-locked currently)

What I needed to hear.

[Canofwhoop]

Ive has experiences when playing COOP/training in jets, and I have had locked onto the enemy jet and fired my missile only for the missile to go off and smack my friendly Blackhawk transporting a full squad of infantry training for insertions. - Had a tricky time trying to convince the server admin not to ban me for all the TK's and destroying a blackhawk... And then right after, same problem only this time i hit a friendly Apache. - I was so embarrassed, i disconnected ASAP. LULZ

[Mora]

Latency has also a big part in this. If the player in the jet has a high ping for example 200 and the person shooting the AA has a much lower ping say 20. The jet has a much shorter time to respond.

[badmojo420]

I wouldn't advise firing your missile before getting a lock, they added a lot of deviation a couple versions ago, so now you'll end up hitting a building, a tree or the ground if you fire before the lock.

There isn't any deviation to the missile is locked on a target and then fired afaik (and even if there is, the tracking will soon correct it), only when your not locked and you fire like in that video then there is a lot of deviation.

To be honest, I miss the exploitation. I was one of those guys who constantly fired the SA7 from the hip.

It's too bad we can't do what BF3 does and not allow firing without the lock, but not exploding without lock sounds good too.(as long as it always works perfectly)

[Stealthgato]

Well that's weird. Was minding my own business 20 mins ago in NwA next to my Bradley spotting targets in Kashan when a MiG flew over, guns blazing. Thought "Meh doesn't hurt to try". I request a Stinger and when he flies over us going straight up and popping flares I manage to get a lock on him looking straight up already, fire and the Stinger gets him while he's doing a barrel roll. Feeling badass, I reload my Stinger just incase the Su-25 decides to come along and 30 seconds later I see him 600m away doing a dive on the Bunkers, I aim, lock and fire, and as he's pulling out BAM he's down aswell. Got both enemy CAS with the Stinger in 1 minute.

Plenty of the times the missile fails to hit a hovering attack helicopter 300m away and now it got both enemy jets 600m away flawlessly. Guess it was in the mood.