How to stock grind at top tier?

[ваня[e-mail]]

Seriously I have no idea how I should stock grind the yak-141. I literally am within the top 1% of AIR-RB players and this seems beyond broken. NO COUNTERMEASURES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! IN A META THAT NOW CREATES A 20KM DEATH ZONE AROUND ANY ENEMY YOU WILL FACE??!?!?!??!?! Seriously the stock grind was broken and awful before the big maps but now its what even I would call "unplayable". Seriously I havent seen a single constructive comment regarding this or how one should do it. The bases are all within the furbal that happens anyways. There are no other AI targets to engage without getting into the earlier explained 20km deathzone thats created by the BVR meta. The only way to survive is to essentially hug the ground and pray you get to a base before someone can launch an IR missile towards you.

As said it would be cool if we could channel some legit tipps here on how to tackle stock grind rn. Because at the 12.0 BR I do honestly not see a way of doing this by just playing.

[ваня[e-mail]]

Originally posted by Venom Thanos:

Assuming that you are talking about parts/upgrades. No other way br0 you have to spend eagles to unlock them, that's what kaijin wants you to do.

yeah thats always been the meme ig but it was at least somewhat do-able. But rn? Honestly out of 10 games I had so far in the yak-141 I had maybe 7 perfect plays with no RWR tag on me and I still died within 30 seconds before or after reaching a base.

[Der Lachende Mann]

If you don't want to spend anything air assault at least until you got countermeasures unlocked is a possibility. !t's not great but still better than getting shot down without any RP.

[Jaes]

You don't, throw in some GE at the problem as Gaijin intends.

If you're not willing to do that, then you need to follow closely with the furball while not making yourself an easy target. Respond immediately to RWR locks and go defensive with Notches. Most will fly with PD on as default so don't merge with them head on. Let them be engulfed in the chaos of the furball then approach from the flanks.

You have no reason to be in an advanced/vanguard position compared to the rest of your team, hang back a bit and let those that are able to engage in BVR engage first, then act as the "clean up" for the resulting clash. If a potential target is already engaging with missiles, engage them. They'll be forced to abandon their SARH lock or die, take advantage of that distraction and potentially save a teammate.

With the bigger maps, you have a multitude of options on when you can pick and choose when to engage, and where to engage from. Use that to your advantage.

A common mistake I see repeated fairly often is to rush to bomb bases when you're stock. Don't do that. My Tomcat can watch you take off and I can figure out what you're doing based on your altitude and closure speed and yeet an AIM-54 at you and there's nothing you can realistically do about it other than pray the missile guidance system decides something else is a more interesting target. How close to the ground you are is irrelevant if I'm looking at you from a top-down position so long as you aren't Notch'd against my radar array, which you will never know because I'm gliding around at 8000m to make sure that AIM-54 has a lot of kinetic energy by the time it impacts you at lower altitudes so you can't simply outmaneuver it.

Hide yourself among the crowd. Don't stand out. If you're one of many targets and you present yourself as the more difficult target to track and hit, or the least immediately threatening target, you'll be much more likely to be ignored, and then be successful with a bomb strike that you can then turn into an opportunity to strike at other aircraft.

The recent missile drag changes are a big boon to taking a defensive position against a missile shot, especially if you're going into Crank/F-Pole positions.

[ваня[e-mail]]

Originally posted by Jaes:

You don't, throw in some GE at the problem as Gaijin intends.

If you're not willing to do that, then you need to follow closely with the furball while not making yourself an easy target. Respond immediately to RWR locks and go defensive with Notches. Most will fly with PD on as default so don't merge with them head on. Let them be engulfed in the chaos of the furball then approach from the flanks.

You have no reason to be in an advanced/vanguard position compared to the rest of your team, hang back a bit and let those that are able to engage in BVR engage first, then act as the "clean up" for the resulting clash. If a potential target is already engaging with missiles, engage them. They'll be forced to abandon their SARH lock or die, take advantage of that distraction and potentially save a teammate.

With the bigger maps, you have a multitude of options on when you can pick and choose when to engage, and where to engage from. Use that to your advantage.

A common mistake I see repeated fairly often is to rush to bomb bases when you're stock. Don't do that. My Tomcat can watch you take off and I can figure out what you're doing based on your altitude and closure speed and yeet an AIM-54 at you and there's nothing you can realistically do about it other than pray the missile guidance system decides something else is a more interesting target. How close to the ground you are is irrelevant if I'm looking at you from a top-down position so long as you aren't Notch'd against my radar array, which you will never know because I'm gliding around at 8000m to make sure that AIM-54 has a lot of kinetic energy by the time it impacts you at lower altitudes so you can't simply outmaneuver it.

Hide yourself among the crowd. Don't stand out. If you're one of many targets and you present yourself as the more difficult target to track and hit, or the least immediately threatening target, you'll be much more likely to be ignored, and then be successful with a bomb strike that you can then turn into an opportunity to strike at other aircraft.

The recent missile drag changes are a big boon to taking a defensive position against a missile shot, especially if you're going into Crank/F-Pole positions.

that right there essentially was my "solution" still this remains a meta and gameplay I am not willing to accept any further. And keep in mind we are talking about a plane with the possibility to engage AI targets. How does this work out with a MIG-29? It simply does not. Or at least I can not think of a way it possibly could. BTW since this will come up at some point during this thread: the YAK-38 AI planes now travel at more than mach 1,5 <3

[ваня[e-mail]]

Its kinda important to understand where exactly the issue is here rn. The issue is not that you get killed from 20km away. The issue is that within 20km you will get radar locks that you will have to notch, forcing you to loose energy, allowing IR missiles in the 4-6km range to be launched. And there simply is no way these IR missiles will miss in that situation. Ive pulled it of 1000s of times. Believe me. You do not fire an AIM-9L if you arent sure its going to hit. We are talking about top tier here 9/10 players can correctly judge missile energy when targeting a plane. That already makes it hard to evade anything correctly but without flares yeah, not gonna happen. I can already hear the keyboard warriors typing "muh huh but in theory you can evade it by moving away from its path etc etc." Y E A H. Sorry bud not gonna happen at 12.0 and if you face any player that has some top tier experience.

[ghost]

you just have to die a lot or drop a lot a lot a lot of money to mod them out i know what one gaijin want you to do that why the make it a pain to play this game now a days

[JuX]

You don't need counter-measures for BVR combat.

Radar missiles only track from front-aspect and cant rear-aspect track. Even if you being locked on to. So by simply going cold from the bandit, you can defeat every radar missile. So only thing you need to worry about is those 30G IR missiles.


But keep in mind F-14A has the mediocre AIM-54A, which can track you without giving a lock-on warning. But will activate and give the RWR warning if the F-14A looses track of you or the missile gets close enough switch to internal guidance. It is however the most noticeable missile in the game and generally fired at beginning of the game, cause their launch range and weight.


You can also cheese the grind by doing nothing but landing and take off's for research spam and if opportunity arises get in to battlefield and get 1x NPC kill for 50% activity rating. With the player size changed to 16v16 the battles are incredibly one-sided now, so finding that opportunity should be easy.