My missiles became almost useless.....

[hide86]

Hi Guys, a quick ( I hope) question:

How come my ARH missiles ( amraam, phoenix, R-77) and even sometimes my SARH missiles become almost useless???

I mean, using F-14D and F-14QS, I shot a phoenix to a J-11 Flanker ( nice work Marc btw! ) form 9 miles away, then from 7, 5 and 4 miles away, and guess?

Yeah, right, 4 Shots, NO hits....now, that's a little frustrating, don't you think?

Same thing often happens with amraams or adders, while sparrows, winders and R-73s still look a little more reliable....

Anybody has suggestions?

They used to work fine till a couple weeks ago...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't wanna become a ground pounder for the rest of my life.... I mean, I like strike missions, but the Cat's still my favorite bird, and at the current state of things, it's almost useless...

Thanks for your help!

hide86

[+Fubar512]

They used to work fine till a couple weeks ago...

 

Perhaps the missiles have a shelf life. Perhaps your AI pilots are getting smarter. Perhaps you've changed your difficulty settings and forgot about it?

[Caesar]

Could be that they are pumping out chaff. It always happens to me when I fly red air that no missiles hit ever unless they're IR, and even then it's questionable because the blue guys (Turkeys, Bugs, Eagles and Vipers) have chaff and flare. When I go against the Flanker as one of the above fighters, I usually have low hit rates, save for IR-guided missiles, and a modified AIM-54C++, which I made a lot more resiliant to chaff. Not 100% kill rate, but it's a lot higher than the other radar missiles!

[maverickHR]

?

I fire sidewinder at 0.4-0.2 NM, sparrow at 1.3-0-8 NM. Almost never miss.

[sparkomatic]

if it worked, then not...sounds like you either changed something in the game or changed targets

[GwynO]

Hi Guys, a quick ( I hope) question:

How come my ARH missiles ( amraam, phoenix, R-77) and even sometimes my SARH missiles become almost useless???

I mean, using F-14D and F-14QS, I shot a phoenix to a J-11 Flanker ( nice work Marc btw! ) form 9 miles away, then from 7, 5 and 4 miles away, and guess?

Yeah, right, 4 Shots, NO hits....now, that's a little frustrating, don't you think?

Same thing often happens with amraams or adders, while sparrows, winders and R-73s still look a little more reliable....

Anybody has suggestions?

They used to work fine till a couple weeks ago...

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Don't wanna become a ground pounder for the rest of my life.... I mean, I like strike missions, but the Cat's still my favorite bird, and at the current state of things, it's almost useless...

Thanks for your help!

hide86

 

 

9 miles for a phoenix sounds a bit close, iirc it was well bvr. Only recently I discovered that I could actually get a lock on from huge ranges, something I completely overlooked was to press home rather than insert to aquire target. What I used to do was zoom around looking for blips on the search radar setting, press insert to aquire but obviously nothing, keep going closer and closer try search and track if it was available, insert again, nothing, try boresight mode then finally at about those ranges you describe bingo press insert to aquire target fire and hope for a kill.... what a waste of time, configuring my new joystick I read the targeting commands again and theres a much better way, set the search to the longest range, find a blip, keep going till your blip is about the middle of the radar screen because in most cases, the middle of one radar range is the maximum of the next lowest, so with the bogey half way down the radar screen hit shift pgdown to move to the next lowest radar range and you will have the ability to designate a bogey with your radar by pressing home, keep pressing home to shift between any and all bogeys on the radar screen for example if the nearest one to me is the one i want i wait for the scan line to pass near it then hit home. Next press insert to lock the radar onto that target. I have all the option settings set to hard apart from visual targeting so you get the yellow box on the target, then press end as this will place either a red box or a blue box on the target and tell you what plane it is, this is as near as we have to an IFF system (Interrogate Friend or Foe) AFAIK and this is obviously useful when your about to launch a phoenix from a bizillion feet away or an archer from 20 miles, we dont want to randomly fire at radar blips without knowing what they are which is the whole point of IFF systems in real life BVR engagements. So now you have found a blip, designated it, locked it interrogated it so you know it's friend or foe, your ready to select a radar missile, fire then depending what kind it is you will either have to keep your target painted with your radar until the missile goes terminal on it's own guidance system is has that capability (you can press f9 for weapon view and wait until the target looks like it's not very far as a guestimate for when it would be self guided) or if you have a fire and forget missile, do what you want to do i.e. find another target and fire at that one, or get in closer to use heat seekers or really close to use guns.

 

Anyways, this is how i use the long range of missiles like the amraam, archer, hawk, phoenix (really long range) etc to best effect now rather than wait for boresight which is so close it's almost on top of them. Whether you get a kill from such bvr ranges is another thing entirely as I found out testing some hawk sams launched from Iranian F-14's. Phoenix missiles however, are devastating and sooo satisfying to take down a squadron of enemy from so far they can't even see the tomcat on their radars. Hope this is useful and sorry if it's repeating what you already knew.

[hide86]

Well...

managed to check a little.... They effectively pump out chaff, but I thought missiles would be a little more resistant to countermeasures...

However, I noticed that you can lock on a bandit and shoot a phoenix from some 50 miles away, but if you follow mission profiles and use alt-n to skip navigation, which I usually do, you get much closer to the enemies, and if you lock on them from 7 miles away, well it's a REAL BVR, considering my average distances...lol

[Gambler]

The Phoneix was actually designed to shoot down Soviet Naval Aviation bombers at long range that would be a threat to carrier groups if the Cold War ever went Hot, so it's performance against a Su-27 variant probably won't be all that good, especially within 15nm at a minimum. It's a fast missle that can easily be F-poled in a maneuverable fighter, such as the Chinese Flanker.

 

The -120 should be fairly reliable, though...if taken into historical aspects.

[+Brain32]

You also have to watch for target path, modern missiles in-game(don't know for RL) are great but are not wonders. AIM120 or R-77 will have no problems missing the target if you try to fire at unrealistic angles at targets travelling at high speed especially if they are popping decoys.

I noticed though that AiM-9X and R-73M2 are mad and can hit virtually anything, scary stuff...

 

 

BTW: Is there any way to make AI engage in BVR combat and even more importantly can one prevent them from sustaining extreme G manouvering(mostly turning). They often evade me making ridiculous shallow dive spiral but at extreme G. No problems for me to counter it(after years of fighting Spitfires in il2 lol) but it does not look too realistic...

[Caesar]

To piggyback off of Brian, if you're firing the Buffalo at long range and the missile tries to lead too far, or you're firing close to the limits of the missile's parameters, the target will leave the FOV and the missile will loose track. In the case of maneuvering fighters, when you fire BVR that isn't a problem, fighter or not, the enemies keep flying straight and level until they are in a dogfight.

 

I'd say your problem is most likely the countermeasures, though, they are over-effective in the games. There's really not an effective solution other than to beef up your missiles resiliance to chaff and flare. If you do this, be ready to put G's on your plane when you're trying to evade. This has been discussed before, so I'd try the search or check the knowledge base to see if anyone has come up with anything else on the subject.

Edited December 9, 2007 by Caesar

[sparkomatic]

- 9X is death's arrow...never forget that and the game is not as accurate as real life

 

- of course the new Python may be even better...

[Shin_kazama]

- 9X is death's arrow...never forget that and the game is not as accurate as real life

 

- of course the new Python may be even better...

 

 

test vids on youtube have proven its really a death arrow.

 

hits 90 deg off bore at a head on target.

[+MigBuster]

test vids on youtube have proven its really a death arrow.

 

hits 90 deg off bore at a head on target.

 

Yeah is why im sticking to pre 80's conflicts untill they invent a tiny laser gun to shoot them down :)

[+FastCargo]

Yeah is why im sticking to pre 80's conflicts untill they invent a tiny laser gun to shoot them down :)

 

Actually those already exist...and are on airliners!

 

 

Uses a directional laser to 'blind' the incoming MANPAD. Not quite the same as shooting it down...but good enough.

 

Never thought I'd be flying a civilian aircraft with more sophisticated counter measures than the military aircraft I flew...

 

FastCargo