F16 - How long to unlock?

[GhostHawk196]

I only want to fly the F16, happy to pay.

How much and how long do I need to grind in order to unlock?

[Jaes]

Depends on your dedication and personal skill. The better you perform, the faster your progress.

Paying for Premium account then purchasing either the F-20 or the F-4S will net you the fastest results.

However, you may want to consider holding off on making purchases until the end of October where you can get both Premium account and Premium aircraft notably cheaper.

I know folks that can grind out a full tech tree in a month if they purchase one of the top tier premiums and have a premium account. For a newbie? Maybe 2-3 months, possibly less.

[=7Cav=SPC.Crimzon.E]

over 600 bucks

[Mark]

+1 for the F-4S.
Get other jets, bomb bases, ground attack.. its good for the points.

[Tankoslav Tepyatdesyatpyatovich]

I've made some rough calculations in regards to playing air sim, as it's the most primitive but stable way to earn decent ammounts of Research Points, you just bomb bases with your Phantom and return to the airfield for rearming, refueling and additional RP reward.
So recently I had a match with my Su-7BMK, which is premium as well and differs not that much with RP reward, 452% RP against 476% RP for F-4S. I played for an hour with no boosters or active premium, each 15 minutes gave me a basic reward for useful actions (you need 600+, around 650 I guess, mission points earned in 15 minutes to get max reward), four periods provided about 30k RP, and also 6k for landings, 36k total. I therefore assume that flying F-4S with a premium on (+100% RP) provides no less than 54k RP per hour (because these +100% are factored into the parentheses along with the basic 100% reward plus 100% for the vehicle's premium status, all multiplied by the vehicle's coefficient, which is 2.26 for the mentioned Su-7BMK and 2.38 for F-4S respectively, so in fact you multiply the reward by 1.5, not 2.0, counter-intuitive isn't it?), which can be greatly increased if you use boosters of course.

Note that in order to buy vehicles of higher ranks, you need to buy enough vehicles on previous ranks, and in our case, you would need to grind no less than three lines if you wanted to get Fighting Falcons for free: if you choose the first line (army interceptor-ish fighters, you anyway have to grind in as Fighting Falcons sit there) and the fourth line (army and naval strike aircrafts), you miss 2 airplanes to unlock rank VI (only get 4/6) and 1 airplanes to unlock level VIII (4/5) while playing for free, but since you said it's okay for you to pay, you do unlock rank VIII with F-4S being the fifth needed aircraft, while for rank VI, buy F-89B and F-89D on November/New Year 50% discounts for 5655 GE total. Should you choose lines 2 (army all-purpose-ish fighters), 3 (naval fighters) or 5 (level bombers) as your second line to unlock ranks, you're getting more problems unlocking new ranks, so stick to lines 1 and 4.

The total ammount of RP you would have to earn in this scenario be like this:

9 800 RP rank I, 9 800 cumulative sum (P-26A-33, P-26B-35, SB2U-2, SB2U-3)

56 200 RP rank II, 66 000 RP CS (P-400, P-38E, P-39N-0, A-36, A-20G-25, SB2C-1C)

154 000 RP rank III, 220 000 RP CS (P-63A-5, P-63A-10, P-38J-15, PBJ-1J, PBJ-1H, P-61C-1)

264 000 RP rank IV, 484 000 RP CS (F-82E, A-26B-10, A-26B-50, AD-2, AD-4, AM-1)

389 000 RP rank V, 873 000 RP CS (F-80A-5, F-80C-10, F3D-1, F-84F...don't forget about both F-89 to unlock the next rank!)

690 000 RP rank VI, 1 563 000 RP CS (F-104A, F-104C, A-4B, FJ-4B, AV-8C)

1 035 000 RP rank VII, 2 598 000 RP CS (F-5E, A-10A late, A-7D, A-7E)

Safe to say it's 3 million RP to buy just the very first F-16A (own cost 400 000 RP), which means that with my aforementioned assumption one gets at least 54 000 RP per hour just bombing bases in F-4S with premium turned on, you need no more than 55 hours and 33 minutes of pure gamemplay in such manner, which can be further boosted by those +10% — +500% to RP (just note that in air sim Enduring Confrontation sessions, each 30 minutes count as a random battle time, so 1 300% for 1 battle booster will apply to your reward in two full 15-minute periods, and won't work further unless you quit, activate another booster and return to the same or another room).

Oh, and if you're really not afraid to invest money to buy Golden Eagles, the time I've calculated can be effectively divided by two, down to 27 hours and 47 minutes (just a bit longer than a day of non-stop playing, waiting times and hangar activities excluded), if you consider using the free research points system: you earn as much of them as regular RP, but have to spend GE to convert them into basic RP and research new vehicles, the exchange rate is 1 GE = 45 RP. That being said, as soon as you hit 1 499 00 free research points on your balance, you can spend 33 312 GE to research all the remaining aircrafts on the way to Fighting Falcons plus F-16A itself.

I understand this research process can be much faster for guys who play air RB instead, as it really has better RP gains in case you perform well (+ boosters are a bit easier to use), but it will require more skill to play well in every match (I guess F-4S might have more troubles bombing bases at 12.0 than F-4C at 10.7, as enemy fighters become even faster and get better radar-guided missiles and thus higher chances to intercept you; in sim, meanwhile, NATO team is often allowed to bomb bases and airfields freely, USSR-China are pretty bad in intercepting American supersonic fighter-bombers, and you can even ask them for PvE in chat), and your SL and RP income is less if your team loses, while in air SB RP income doesn't depend on victory, you only get a bit more SL if you win.

Hope this helped!

["The Wolf"]

hell nah

[SomeStoner]

"im willing to pay to get to top tier and ruin the experience for everyone else when I get smoked by a missile and leave the game after one death"
fixed it for you

[VVaЯF0xу]

Id say its about a week of base bombing, if you buy premium harrier and a week of premium acc.

[Tankoslav Tepyatdesyatpyatovich]

Originally posted by VVaЯF0xу:

Id say its about a week of base bombing, if you buy premium harrier and a week of premium acc.

The premium Harrier (AV-8A) was removed from sale some months ago, plus it's rank VI, OP would anyway need to use another plane to research F-16s even if he could obtain it.

[Tandrad]

japanese one is the fastest to get, maybe like 100 hours if you have a solid premium. i got mine in like 400 gameplay hours with just the premium account

[VVaЯF0xу]

Originally posted by АГЕНТ КАЛИТКИ:

Originally posted by VVaЯF0xу:

Id say its about a week of base bombing, if you buy premium harrier and a week of premium acc.

The premium Harrier (AV-8A) was removed from sale some months ago, plus it's rank VI, OP would anyway need to use another plane to research F-16s even if he could obtain it.

Oh wow, i didnt know that it was removed. Anyway, other prem will do. And although harrier is not rank VII, you will still have to buy previous planes in tree, so you will have something to farm remaining 2 planes. Maybe not week, but not longer than two.