Having difficulty taking down..

[ᗪ🝗⼕ㄖ丫]

Hi, im having trouble taking down the boss plane with drones and propellers. I forget its name because I havent played in a while. I loved every minute of the game until that point. Do I need to keep upgrading myself and buying better fighter planes through MP? What SP weapon should I use? Or what jet is recommended? Its the first encounter with the monster. lvl 13 I think.

[Rastrelly]

Okay, so there are 3 encounters with Arsenal Bird, in missions 3, 12 and 19. As far as I understand we are speaking of mission 12, Stonehenge defensive, though the tactics don't really change from encounter to encounter.
1. Take bullet-proof fuel tank and automatic fire extinguisher parts to increase your survivability if you are getting shot too much.
2. When the AB is making its main salvo, just pull up or use flares.
3. Try using something like HPAA against AB modules. They are killing off AB's systems incredibly quickly.
Specifically for mission 12, there are 2 phases of the AB fight.
I. Part where you fight only drones.
II. Part where you attack the AB itself.
On the first part to avoid failstate you need to shoot down drones. Any drones will do, just make frags. I think 4 or 5 is enough to avoid mission failure.
On the second part *all you need to do is shoot down the 2 big propellers*. If you have issues surviving up close, you can even try using a plane with LAAM or EML to take them out from afar. Simultaneous usage of MG and HPAA takes propellers incredibly fast, too. After the two main propellers are down (will be confirmed by NPCs) you can disengage the Bird and concentrate on surviving and picking off drones.

[Lack of Stuff]

Since you say it's the first encounter with the Arsenal Bird then the F-2A works fine and should be easy to unlock if you haven't already. Just take HVAA and give the propellers 2 regular and 2 special, rinse and repeat till the mission target changes to the drones.

Edit: Don't get fried by the shield when you see a large red circle appear on the radar.

[OneNonconstructiveUser]

If you are struggling so bad just restart from the checkpoint.

[ᗪ🝗⼕ㄖ丫]

Thanks to all of you. Im going to give it go again with your suggestions & tips. One problem I had is after killing the propellers I kept engaging the arsenal bird which eventually overwhelms me. Thanks to Rastrelly, I didnt know I could disengage after. So as soon as they're down im all survival. I have the F-2A, I swear it gave me more objectives though after destroying them, as in asking me to destroy more further down the wings? Or can I ignore it? Or am I not remembering correctly. Gonna try ..thx all