Good Rocket Pod planes?

[FF]

Hello, I'm currently editting the plane section of my decks and it has come to my attention after 400h of playing that I have no knowledge of rocket pod planes but would like to utilize them. Can you all help tell me which are good

[Rabidnid]

I have 2,300 hours and no knowledge of them either. Basically the bigger the rocket the better. try to use the ones with 4 to 10 HE rather than the smaller ones with 1/2 HE.

[Brandon_Lee]

If you play CW like me then you're almost out of options here, it's either harrier gr3 or canadian starfighter. First one has 10% ecm (doesn't help much considering it's CAS) and a bit more agile, but CF-104 has better pods. However for the same price you can bring in a couple more AT planes, so I often switch between CF-104 and AT/MRF...
Overall Bluefor do have some good options, ie swedish 60pt J35F with 135mm rockets and nice availability (my personal favorite), and american 60pt skyhawk with 16x zuni and 20% ECM.
Redfor have big problems there... URSS have frogfoot variant with 4x 240 mm rockets (devastating 11 he) but it costs 140 pt because of guided rockets and armor and only has 2x trained or 1x elite availability. S5M rockets are 2 he, so only viable alternatives are chinese Q-5I and polish MiG-21MF (20% ecm, 1000 km/h and 4x 240 mm S-24, but costly AF, however 2x elite available for NSWP deck), and that's all.

Edit: as bluefor I often go for rocket pods, they were my favotite during my first campaign playthrough. As redfor I ocasionally use MiG-21 for NSWP motorized.

[Rabidnid]

Polish HE 10
Finland and China HE 4
Czech and Russian Su 25s HE 10 plus missiles.

USA, Norway and Sweden HE 4

[Brandon_Lee]

Originally posted by Rabidnid:

Polish HE 10
Finland and China HE 4
Czech and Russian Su 25s HE 10 plus missiles.

USA, Norway and Sweden HE 4

It's actually 11 HE now, but overall that's right.
Now, why I do like Draken - low spread and somewhat higher supression, and 900 km/h speed. Why I don't like Frogfoot - guided rockets (good redfor planes are all costly AF, if I play redfor and I need AT plane - I'd never go for Kh-25, not the worst noghtmare I can imagine but definitely top-3), and then pay 140pt for S-24? No way. That's why polish MiG is actually best buy on the red side.

[FF]

I thank you all for partaking in this discussion. I tried utilizing the Swedish J 35F and it went well. I launched it against 2 sections of MANPADs (American Stingers). The Jet launched its rocket pods and killed one of the section, leaving the other "worried". Another play was that the same jet resupplied and took out a full group of Navy SEALs and their nearby transport. All in all they accomplished what a similar priced light bomber could do but with less risks of the payloads missing their targets with the infantry having survived with 3 or 4 men. I myself will try using these rocket pod aircraft for future battles to gather more data

[Wilson]

Sad thing is i've only had 1 time rocket pods from jets was effectively used against me, it was from spam 70pt planes right off the bat lmao. Lets just say, i was kinda embarrassed having to ask for help because of them.

[Nick]

Rocket pods suck

[Delle(DK)]

Well at least the Rocket pod planes are very cheap... I typical use them in campaign to stop APC's or kill infantry. I know 1 plane is pretty bad, but if you have 8 of them and dont mind loosing some, then they are Fast to rearm, and fly fast. And if you use the planes to shoot example command vehicles that drive from a-b, or kill artellery or air defence with them, then they are cheap and do the job sometimes ;-)

Also if you send more than 1 plane then you can actual rather easy take out most targets..
Yes you maybe loose 1 plane, but they are very cheap and is worth loosing to stop example artillery or aa... Actual they can also use their gun against infantry or make example a tank panic.

Remember you do not nessesary need to kill the enemy with the plane. Often it is good enough to make vehicles panic and damage them a bit... THis make them much less effecient and there for your own troops on the ground more easy can kill them and only use a little ammounition and less risk of them self getting killed.
Remember your planes rearm off the map, your troops on the gorund are "expensive " to rearm

Example if you use the rocket plane to hit an T-90 that is a really the best of the best, then it become much less efficient and the crew scared.. making this super tank a bit more easy to kill.

[FF]

I had my own 55pt tanks killed by rockept pod planes... the cool thing about Rocket pod planes is that they are excellent at taking out AA mounted on jeeps .......... and a PATRIOT

[Brandon_Lee]

Originally posted by Delle(DK):

Well at least the Rocket pod planes are very cheap... I typical use them in campaign to stop APC's or kill infantry. I know 1 plane is pretty bad, but if you have 8 of them and dont mind loosing some, then they are Fast to rearm, and fly fast. And if you use the planes to shoot example command vehicles that drive from a-b, or kill artellery or air defence with them, then they are cheap and do the job sometimes ;-)

Also if you send more than 1 plane then you can actual rather easy take out most targets..
Yes you maybe loose 1 plane, but they are very cheap and is worth loosing to stop example artillery or aa... Actual they can also use their gun against infantry or make example a tank panic.

Remember you do not nessesary need to kill the enemy with the plane. Often it is good enough to make vehicles panic and damage them a bit... THis make them much less effecient and there for your own troops on the ground more easy can kill them and only use a little ammounition and less risk of them self getting killed.
Remember your planes rearm off the map, your troops on the gorund are "expensive " to rearm

Example if you use the rocket plane to hit an T-90 that is a really the best of the best, then it become much less efficient and the crew scared.. making this super tank a bit more easy to kill.

This.
Even cheapest rocket planes make good CV snipers 'cause few will use heavily armored CVs, most people use infantry and wheeled vehicles, those usually killed in one run.
Rocket pods work surprisingly good against AA, generally if enemy AA piece doesn't have armor (or just 1-2 armor), isn't backed by another AA and your plane has enough veterancy to avoid being instantly stunned by its gun/rocket - your plane would win 9 out of 10.
Rockets are much faster than bombs so noone gets out of blast radius, also rocket pod planes usually have gun so they can do a strafe run on any nearby unit after they fired off their rockets.
There's little spread but that's rather good, however you must know where to shoot.
Even 2-3 planes can completely stall enemy push, killing most infantry and light vehicles and panicking armored ones making them practice targets for your tanks/atgms.
Sure many people don't use ffar at all but that doesn't make them bad. There's no 'bad unit'. Or 'good unit'. It's not about units it's how you use them.

[Rodi]

I like to use mig21s on high veterancy. They can bust light vehicles up to medium tanks,
essentially being capable of SEADing.
They sometimes manage to stun heavies.
Some variants of the mig21 receive SRAAMs aswell so they can double as backline anti helo AA if desperate.

If you want to fight infantry with pod planes follow the advice of others ITT, but you shouldn't really use rocket planes against infantry. Simply use bombers or mortars(which you should always have a stack of btw).