So how do you actually use the Phoenix missiles?

[khani]

I remember you had to use TWS, Track and just fire and that's it. However there seems to be more to it? My teammates get 2-3 kills and I never seem to get any these days with the Phoenix missiles.. What am I missing?

[mokka]

dont use max tank, pull up and fly as high as possible. track them from above for a longer range, thats it. turn back and reload

[Absterago]

Originally posted by Vkhani12345:

I remember you had to use TWS, Track and just fire and that's it. However there seems to be more to it? My teammates get 2-3 kills and I never seem to get any these days with the Phoenix missiles.. What am I missing?

In truth, it's probably just a coincidence that you see players who have that one luck out of 20 games, but scored a kill with other missiles AIM7F, H, etc. No one will convince me personally that the AIM54 Phoenic hasn't been nerfed, and I think it's been done twice. I have already played a lot with this plane, K/D 4+ for smart people who want to write a skill issue and there was no problem with it for another two weeks to give 3x kills per game, even 4. But then a mysterious patch arrived, where literally from an hour to hour rockets lost 50 perc. their effectiveness and were not able to hit targets like before. I dropped to 1.2 hits per game and if I was lucky, 3 hits once every 10 games. I happily tested it on a sample of about 100 games before I write anything, since I'm actually doing a grind for the event. If someone wants to tell me that in a sample of 100 games, if your average K/D falls from 4 to 2, it's just a coincidence, then the earth is flat. Today, even after today's patch, I've already played about 12 games, and since the patch arrived, I took the 6 Phoenix lineup and today I even have a problem giving one hit. I launched 72 aim54s in 12 games and only about 5 of them hit the target, which is absolutely ridiculous since this missile had over 80 percent hit success rate. I carefully watched my teammates in the F-14 and they also had no hits, one hit, two hits at most, and that was rare. So Gaijin probably nerfed again because only Russia can have something strong. Or he was afraid that the grind on evant went very well with the F-14 player, so he had to limit it. Anyway, these constant changes, bad nerfs stop entertaining me when every patch game works differently. Often, when a patch arrives, I don't even want to turn on the game anymore, congratulations Gaijin. I will not even write about the US AIM120 nerfs here.

[JuX]

Altitude affects the missiles energy, so climb high before launching them for long range attacks. To launch them you require to soft-lock (semi square) and maintain these targets within the radar cone when missiles are in transit. So semi-manual radar controls is recommended as automatic target cycling (option) tends to mess up the radar cone. And once you are done firing missiles, soft-lock the most ideal target you can hold lock on to and retain the cone over all the targets as you turn away and maintain the targets at the edge of your radar.

Terms of range id say 50km is pushing it and will have weak energy on arrival on targets flying low. While at about 40km it retains enough energy to actually attempt to hit these target.

AIM-54A requires more guidance as it activates once near target. While AIM-54C will activate when it's either in range or looses TWS guidance, so you can stop guiding them bit early in effort to defend against incoming missiles or flee before anyone catches you.


To actually hit someone you simple need to look whom is the most ideal target. Base rushers are the most ideal targets as they often do not bother defending against the AIM-54 in effort to beat their teammates to the base and simply take the missile to the face.

[khani]

Originally posted by JuX:

Altitude affects the missiles energy, so climb high before launching them for long range attacks. To launch them you require to soft-lock (semi square) and maintain these targets within the radar cone when missiles are in transit. So semi-manual radar controls is recommended as automatic target cycling (option) tends to mess up the radar cone. And once you are done firing missiles, soft-lock the most ideal target you can hold lock on to and retain the cone over all the targets as you turn away and maintain the targets at the edge of your radar.

Terms of range id say 50km is pushing it and will have weak energy on arrival on targets flying low. While at about 40km it retains enough energy to actually attempt to hit these target.

AIM-54A requires more guidance as it activates once near target. While AIM-54C will activate when it's either in range or looses TWS guidance, so you can stop guiding them bit early in effort to defend against incoming missiles or flee before anyone catches you.


To actually hit someone you simple need to look whom is the most ideal target. Base rushers are the most ideal targets as they often do not bother defending against the AIM-54 in effort to beat their teammates to the base and simply take the missile to the face.

Do i keep TWS aimed at the direction they are coming from?

[Kay]

as long as you're using DL (datalink) to guide the missile (the target on your radar scope has a circle around it) you need to keep the radar pointed in their direction, otherwise the missile stops getting course corrections and just goes off it's own inertial guidance system.

Note that you don't need to keep the target selected, just visible on the radar scope to give course corrections to the missile.

The distance you can reasonably hit people at depends on a lot of factors, your altitude/speed, their altitude/speed, if they defend etc. so there isn't a hard and fast rule for launching them, I've gotten a lot of kills from 75km launches against other F-14s that climb and launch their own Phoenixes, but don't crank after firing (turn away from your target so that it's on the edge of your radar scope, near the limit of how far it can turn, so that it takes longer for hostile missiles to get to you)

[khani]

Originally posted by Kay:

as long as you're using DL (datalink) to guide the missile (the target on your radar scope has a circle around it) you need to keep the radar pointed in their direction, otherwise the missile stops getting course corrections and just goes off it's own inertial guidance system.

Note that you don't need to keep the target selected, just visible on the radar scope to give course corrections to the missile.

The distance you can reasonably hit people at depends on a lot of factors, your altitude/speed, their altitude/speed, if they defend etc. so there isn't a hard and fast rule for launching them, I've gotten a lot of kills from 75km launches against other F-14s that climb and launch their own Phoenixes, but don't crank after firing (turn away from your target so that it's on the edge of your radar scope, near the limit of how far it can turn, so that it takes longer for hostile missiles to get to you)

And when does Datalink stop? Ive heard around 15km or so they start steering themselfs but unsure how true that is

[Kay]

Originally posted by Vkhani12345:

And when does Datalink stop? Ive heard around 15km or so they start steering themselfs but unsure how true that is

As above, you can tell when the missile has acquired the target because the circle around the target in your radar scope disappears.

You can see the maximum range this can happen on the radar scope, the solid section of the line between the missile and the target is where the missile can acquire a target on its own, the dotted section is where the missile is relying on DL guidance or its own internal guidance (IOG)

[khani]

Originally posted by Kay:

Originally posted by Vkhani12345:

And when does Datalink stop? Ive heard around 15km or so they start steering themselfs but unsure how true that is

As above, you can tell when the missile has acquired the target because the circle around the target in your radar scope disappears.

You can see the maximum range this can happen on the radar scope, the solid section of the line between the missile and the target is where the missile can acquire a target on its own, the dotted section is where the missile is relying on DL guidance or its own internal guidance (IOG)

The whole circle mechanic is confusing but I think i get it, Ill have to try again ingame, Thanks for the help!

[Rampant chinese LLM chatbot]

Originally posted by Kay:

Originally posted by Vkhani12345:

And when does Datalink stop? Ive heard around 15km or so they start steering themselfs but unsure how true that is

As above, you can tell when the missile has acquired the target because the circle around the target in your radar scope disappears.

You can see the maximum range this can happen on the radar scope, the solid section of the line between the missile and the target is where the missile can acquire a target on its own, the dotted section is where the missile is relying on DL guidance or its own internal guidance (IOG)

that's supposed to happend? never saw it happend on the R-77 even at 15KM