Dogfighting and flares

[PBAsydney]

True!

#ReverseAATo1.3.9
#MakeAANonGreatAgain

and dog fights will be fun again...

Honestly, as someone who mainly rolls in armor and occasionally does some CAS I never had an issue with 1.3.9 AA, whether from ground of air perspective, the balance was fine.

[Danesh_italiano]

Honestly, as someone who mainly rolls in armor and occasionally does some CAS I never had an issue with 1.3.9 AA, whether from ground of air perspective, the balance was fine.

Yeah... AA was fine on 1.3.9. The problem at that time was the missile spam and redirected AA. Since there is no more missile spam and not much redirected AA (AA now explodes on flares) the new problem is dying very quiclky/easly by aa. Jet pilots dont need skills any more.. just lock and fire = gg

[DogACTUAL]

"[...] The long term outlook is that the ‘Kill Probability=1’ AAM will remain an illusory goal,[...]"

Well yeah... common sense already tells us that no A2A missile will have a hit probability of 100%. We already knew that and it is no different ingame right now, missiles still miss jets quite often, just not nearly as often as before. That article is just stating the obvious, but it is no proof of A2A missiles failing on the broad spectrum and forcing gun engagements.

This article shows the performance of the AIM-9X missile

The russian flare spoof story seems to be fake news (unless the pilots are lying). Seems like the missile was just a dud, possibly because of bad maintenance (took me a while to find that article again):
Here's The Definitive Account Of The Syrian Su-22 Shoot Down From The Pilots Themselves - The Drive

Even if the flare story was true, the sample size is so small that no proper conclusion on actual overall missile performance could be made, for all we know the peformance could actually be stellar, but this one particular missile failed for some reason. So anecdotal evidence at best.

Keep in mind the second missile fired (AIM 120) managed to destroy the jet well under its advertised minimum engagement
distance, if you wanted to you could actually take that as 'proof' of how awesome and reliable the AIM 120 is.

[DogACTUAL]

To the people saying the new dogfights do not require skill anymore, can you elaborate why exactly you think that is the case?
Wasn't the meta always that who sees the other jet first wins?

[Hunter291]

"Dogfighting is a waste of assets" - somefag

[DogACTUAL]

Everything others said about flare spamming attracting missiles towards the aircraft is true. If a missile is launched at you, try to just launch flares once or twice at maximum and then wait at least 3 seconds before launching other flares.

If you spam out flares continuously the missile will get attracted to the newest set of flares and splash your aircraft.

[Jack_Howitzer]

To the people saying the new dogfights do not require skill anymore, can you elaborate why exactly you think that is the case?
Wasn't the meta always that who sees the other jet first wins?

Are you trolling because you need to incite arguments or just because you do not fully comprehend this game? I'm not sure so I will answer this time.

Upping missile hit percentage DRASTICALLY, while keeping it as easy to gain lock-on as previously. What will it cause?

Answer: people to be able to gain lock-on in matter of seconds, firing one (1) missile and getting the kill.

Instead of missing possibly all the missiles and having to resort to using gun which many people couldn't use as it required moderate skill.

Not even mentioning the fact that spraying AA in the sky when seeing a blink of enemy jet will score a kill maybe 50% of the time, thus rendering CAS more or less useless.

[SWAT-]

Just gonna throw this here...

[DogACTUAL]

-snip-

Launching flares after you hear the missile warning requires no skill at all.
Knowing when and how much to preflare in certain situations on the other hand does.
And even now i still get to use the gun quite often.

Even before the update it usually was, whoever sees the other jet first wins.
Better missile performance just speeds up that process and reduces situations where a jet dodges all your missiles without any skill just by chance, even though you deserve the kill since you spotted him first or outmanouvered him.

Good situational awareness and spotting ability is one of the greatest skills to have in PR dogfights, so why shouldn't it be rewarded?

Through testing i found that if you hear a missile warning and then use flares smartly instead of just spamming them your chance of dodging the missile is around above 50%.
With preflaring your chances get much better, although there is still that thing where you can shoot the flare and the missile might track the aircraft instead as seen in the footage, which should be fixed if possible.

Agree on ground AA being too OP though, very apparent if you test it and from the footage posted here, especially helicopters are just sitting ducks.

[viirusiiseli]

Launching flares after you hear the missile warning requires no skill at all.
Knowing when and how much to preflare in certain situations on the other hand does.
And even now i still get to use the gun quite often.

Even before the update it usually was, whoever sees the other jet first wins.
Better missile performance just speeds up that process and reduces situations where a jet dodges all your missiles without any skill just by chance, even though you deserve the kill since you spotted him first or outmanouvered him.

Good situational awareness and spotting ability is one of the greatest skills to have in PR dogfights, so why shouldn't it be rewarded?

Through testing i found that if you hear a missile warning and then use flares smartly instead of just spamming them your chance of dodging the missile is around above 50%.
With preflaring your chances get much better, although there is still that thing where you can shoot the flare and the missile might track the aircraft instead as seen in the footage, which should be fixed if possible.

Agree on ground AA being too OP though, very apparent if you test it and from the footage posted here, especially helicopters are just sitting ducks.

You are only talking about post 1.0, a.k.a. the most cancerous patches PR has ever seen CAS wise. You didn't play during 0.98 and before, when CAS jet or heli dogfights made sense and were more about skill than blind luck as it is now.

You should maybe idk go on a pre 1.0 CAS montage marathon on YouTube and maybe then you wouldn't sound so unwise all the time.

0.98 and before, skill, preparation and looking around like crazy actually helped you win dogfights whether it was heli or jet. Then came Jafar_Ironclad who removed all the speed from helis along with AA missiles, made cannons OP and made the first steps toward effing up the jet AA fights.

This resulted in what we see constantly in current games: dogfights are a 50/50 win no matter your skill level due to lowered speed (can't run away or win by skillful maneuvering), buffed cannon (taking 1 or 2 hits means you've pretty much lost the fight). Often this results in the worse crew killing the better crew, because simply going to 1500 alt and waiting wins the fight and only the noobs are patient enough to waste half a round for this (the one thing that Jafar tried to remove from PR by taking away heli AA, he made infinitely worse).

So then the worse crew kills the better one, and 90% of the times they die within 10 minutes because the first ground target they try to go for, ends up getting them killed because they're bad.

That's why every single good CAS pilot stopped using it and moved on to armor instead. Only ones are left are the tryhards who might stay alive for 40 minutes to get 15 kills.

DEVs reached too far with 1.0 and failed as a result, because they broke the long-standing tradition of making small fixes and changes, that worked for so long.

[DogACTUAL]

I am aware of how the meta was back then, although i didn't play then, i watched quite a lot of videos and read many posts going into detail on that. You should know that since a while ago i made a thread listing all the things that have been done to CAS over the years.

I totally agree about attack helicopter fights being silly and random now, i really wish we had AA missiles for AHs again.
Which is why i don't understand your opposition to more effective A2A missiles for jets.
It's the same thing, see the other CAS first, get the win (in most cases).

So i don't understand why you think looking around frantically and checking your surroundings doesn't give you an edge anymore, that is not true at all. It is the opposite actually, usually the nubs don't check their surroundings and end up getting seen first.

That's why for jet combat potent A2A missiles don't favour the nubs because they will barely get to use them first.

Now overly potent ground AA is another story. That one basically forces you to only hit lases because the moment you fly lower and engage targets 'manually' a random AA will target your flare and just explode your jet instanty.

[PatrickLA_CA]

Yeah, I agree with viirus, CAS was actually fun before 1.0. Now, it isn't even tempting, at least for me. There's no fun in killing or getting killed as a result of seeing the guy first, even though that's the case IRL. There's almost no way to evade or turn the tables.

[Menuen]

Now overly potent ground AA is another story. That one basically forces you to only hit lases because the moment you fly lower and engage targets 'manually' a random AA will target your flare and just explode your jet instanty.

To attack lase you need to dive than drop an bomb and run away. With new jet phisic its taking for ever to go high enough so the AA cant kill you. But if you hear the lock you are almost 80% sure you are dead (In helis is like 90%).

Today on Test airfield i spammed 30 flares after i heard lock and I died anyways, enemy jet was like 1400m away and still i could do shit (one or two time i was smoking but before i turned he could shoot second AA ), same with ground AA. With helicopter i could dodge missle from 1300m away, but still i was smoking and i didnt have enough time to rtb 700m to main. You can only survive AA missle if you preflare (4 out of 5 times i survived), but still there is always this one guy who will camp next to your main with the AA.

[DogACTUAL]

Flare spam will attract the missile to your aircraft because only the 2 newest set of launched flares will actually work. So by spamming flares you just lay out a nice path for the missile to follow to your aircraft and splash it. Try flaring only once or twice and wait at least 3 seconds before flaring again, it will make a big difference.

[Hunter291]

True!

#ReverseAATo1.3.9
#MakeAANonGreatAgain

and dog fights will be fun again...

^ ^ ^ ^

[viirusiiseli]

REVERT_TO_0.981

fIXeD fOr yOU 1.0 nEWfRiEnDs

[Menuen]

Flare spam will attract the missile to your aircraft because only the 2 newest set of launched flares will actually work. So by spamming flares you just lay out a nice path for the missile to follow to your aircraft and splash it. Try flaring only once or twice and wait at least 3 seconds before flaring again, it will make a big difference.

When you flare once it's not working anyway. When you shoot the rocket and he is locked, you can see that rocket will almost never relock to flares, it's going straight into enemy jet.

[DogACTUAL]

This is not true. The USAF had to retrofit their jets with guns because bvr fights didn't go so well due to the poor accuracy of their missiles...Do you have any sources that support your arguments?

(quote cut a bit and summarized from 2 different posts)

Since you asked for sources, here. While the early A2A missiles had their flaws, the story about guns outshining the early A2A missiles is a common misconception, this video sums it up nicely:
Quora thread, first two answers are very well researched, first one is from an actual former navy pilot: https://www.quora.com/Why-didnt-the-F-4-Phantoms-in-Vietnam-perform-as-expected-with-its-missiles-and-had-to-go-back-to-using-guns-Didnt-the-missiles-work-well