This is my guide to using the phalanx turrets on the USS essex. While my battlefield skills in most areas range between average and poor, this is one area where i have devoted a lot of time to playing and feel i have some level of expertise. Although my play has mainly been on the Wake Island map, and this guide will reference this map quite regularly, the tactics i present should work quite well on the other maps as well.
The Phalanx turrets! Why use them?
As anyone who has ever played a round on the US side on Wake with dominant J10 pilots will tell you, spawning on the carrier can be a real bitch. The J10s are capable of using their cannons (and bombs if they are feeling particulrly nasty) to destroy any aircraft that are trying to take off, massacre any infantry on the carrier deck, destory any rubber boats that leave from the underside of the carrier or the island and generally make the game seriously unfun for you. Meanwhile the pilots are racking up 100 point plus scores and expending very little effort to do so. Dice has provided us with two phalanx turrets each compromising of a vulcan mini gun and 8 sam missiles to protect your team. Manning these effectively can mean the difference between your team getting off the carrier, getting on wake and having a chance of winning the round and dying on the carrier, capping no flags and generally watching your Kd ratio going completely to ****e.
What is at your disposal?
The Phalanx does not want for firepower!! When sitting in the phalanx turret you have two options at your disposal. A vulcan cannon that virtually fires an uninterrupted line of powerful splash damage dealing shells, and a sam missile launcher that can quickly fire up to 8 sam missiles. While there is still a serious question mark in regards to the accuracy of the missiles, both are deadly, and since patch 1.2 i have found that if you manage to fire all 8 missiles at an aircraft, it usually gets hit atleast once. The Vulcan cannon is your short range defence and is capable of chewing up jets very quickly. The key to using the vulcan against jets is to lead your target slightly. At close range i usually find it best to keep the cross hairs centered on the very front of the aircraft, as this seems to score hits in middle of the planes fuselage. The further away the target the further ahead of it you will need to aim. Your own protection while sitting in the phalanx turret is actually quite weak, you can be destroyed by a shortish stream of shells from an incoming enemy aircraft. As a game balance measure i would suggest to EA that making the phalanx turret about 25% stronger would provide for more balanced game play, but you can still do okay with what you have.
What class should i be
Engineer to allow you to repair your phalanx when it gets damaged. Which it will. Often. You will almost never go into combat with a jet and come out undamaged unless the piolt is useless.
How to combat jets?
If you are in a phalanx and your enemy is in a jet then he is at an enormous advantage. Both of you have similar armor and similar firepower, but he can appear from anywhere within a 360 degree radius of you. Your location is fixed and if he is experienced then he knows exactly where you are. Still, you can overcome! As i said earlier, i am not a great bf2 player, but i have a positive kdr in air defense (almost all on wake, almost entirely against J10s) and im sure there are others that are a lot better than I. Here is how to do it. First step is ask, beg, plead with your teammates to spot any incoming jets. I remembered once we had no flags on wake so i jumped in the essex, but got destroyed a few times in a row buy a clever flier who appeared from unpredictable places and chain gunned me in the back. So i asked very politely over team chat for people on the carrier to spot the jets near the carrier. Almost instantly i get messages of "enemy jet spotted" with the help of the mini map i was able to turn to face the incoming jets before they could attack me and i was able to shoot both down. We didnt win the round but we managed to isolate the Chinese to the air field before our tickets ran out.
The specific tactics i use when confronting jets are pretty simple. Sams at long range and the cannon at short ranges and for self defence. This can best be described by outlining several different situations one might come across when defending against jets.
Situation one is when the jet comes directly at you. This is the move of the smart jetster, because once he has taken the phalanx out he is free to rape. Here i dont bother with sams, they are too inaccurate and time isnt on my side. I instead center my cross hairs on the inbound and blast away. You generally need about a second of contniuous hits to take a jet down, which is harder than it sounds but not impossible. When he is moving directly towards you just line it up dead center on the target and fire. Simple really. Practise this in quiet times by centering the crosshairs on your own jets as they fly across the carrier to rearm. There are a few possible results from his scenario. The first is that you die. THis means you didnt see him early enough (stay aleart and have people spot for you) or you didnt aim well enough (practice). The second is that you killed him (well done) and the third is that you damaged him and he pulled away, in this case i would suggest switching to missiles, locking and firing off as many as you can without killnig a friendly. I have gotten a lot of kills by damaging with guns and then killing with missiles.
The second scenario is when the Jet ignores you initially and attacks the carrier. Here i like to fire two or three missiles at maximum range, hopefully this will make him evade and mess up his attack run. When he gets closer fire your cannons aiming for the front of the aircraft, then as he passes over and flies away ripple off your remaining missiles. If the jet survives all this then chances are that the next attack is coming straight for you. So as he dissappears from view then be sure to see exactly where he leaves from, and what direction he looks to be turning. Make a mental calculation as to how much room he will need to turn and come back and center your gunsights on where you think he will appear from. Then go back to scenario 1.
Trash talk. Yep thats right. After the J10s figure out that the guy on the phalanx is formidable they may just stay the hell away from you. Meaning you are very bored. If you want repeat business i find the best way to do it is to trash talk the guys you have just shot down and challenge them to come and have another try. Often pride dictates that they will jump back in the plane and come straight back at you. Fun!
Against Attack Choppers
Attack choppers are just about your toughest opponents. The dont have the pace of the jets but they can tv missile you from a long way away and have enough armor to survive a lot of fire from your vulcan and that more than makes up for it. Your best counter is that you have 8 missiles, and need only 2 hits to take the chopper down. If i see a z10 coming in for a spot of carrier raping i basically know that the first thing they will try to do is tv missile the phalanx. Me. My first step would be to try and retard this attack. I do this by firing my first two missiles at the ac before its close enough for me to lock on. Hopefully the pilot will see the smoke trail and take evasive maneuvers which will in turn hopefully mess up the gunners tv missile shot. The next step happens after the chopper gets within range, you want to make it drop its flares. So lock on and fire 2 more missiles. The pilot cant ignore these and will almost always respond by dropping flares. That leaves you four missiles in your magazine. SO after the flares are gone, reaquire your target and ripple off all of them. Then you probably have one dead chopper and four points.
Unfortunately there are things that the ac pilot can do to null and void the above tactics. Figure it out for yourself.
Against Transport Choppers
Skycows are easy targets for you. Too big and not particularly manouverable so they cant avoid both your guns and your sams. Plus they are sometimes loaded with points......ermm enemy infantry.
Not a great lot of science to it. Lock on and shoot a missile or two. Wait for flares to drop and then shoot the rest of your missiles. If the infantry parachute clear then they are perfect targets for your vulcan cannon. If they land in the water either cannon them if possible, or if they are too close then get out and shoot them with your pistol. Easy!
Against Infantry
Occasionally enemy infantry will try to raid your carriers on foot. You have the ultimate anti infantry gun at your disposal. Use it, just do it in such a way that your own infantry dont get caught in the cross fire. Be careful to get them quickly though as you are only an erix hit away from death at any time.
Against Boats
If you spot an inbound boat from out to sea then wait till its a comfortable range away and then cut it in half with your vulcan. If its too close then spot it and hope one of your helos can take it out, or alternatively just let them get aboard the carrier and then murder them with your vulcan when they climb up to the flight deck.
GENERAL TIPS
Scanning
The best way to not get taken by surprise is to scan constantly, look up, look down, shift side to side. If you hear an "Enemy Jet Spotted" then look straight to your minimap. Look at the sun regularly to make sure no jets are diving out of it. Remember a pesky jet can appear from pretty much anywhere, and usually the first thing you see is a stream of shells heading towards you. Be alert because you dont have long to react.
Double Trouble (originally suggested by baggygreen)
As mentioned earlier in the guide the essex has not one but two CIWS turrets. The primary turret is located at the end of the flight deck, the secondary is located on top of the super structure at the other end of the ship. If both are effectively manned you can set up a nasty little death trap for any marauding enemy pilots. Unfortunately the firing radius of the secondary turret is blocked quite significantly by the ships super structure. But this can be a positive as well as a neagtive as it gives you good protection and means you can be attacked by from less angles than the primary turret can. The second turret is rarely manned by anybody, that gives it the advantage of surprise. Often a plane will chain gun the flight deck and then unthinkingly blunder into the kill zone of the 2nd turret.
If you find that both turrets are being regularly manned, work out who the other guy is and SQUAD UP. Talk it through on voip, warn each other of incomings, and SPOT SPOT SPOT. Unfortunately ive never seen this work, but in theory two skilled aa gunners working together effectively should easily be able to turn a carrier into an inpenetrable fortress that enemy planes only dare to attack when bored of life. Kinda like in real life i guess.
Pick your moment (originally suggested by iburnasses)
Another good tactic that i find works is waiting for a plane to begin making its attack run before jumping in the essex. I didnt know this initially due to lack of time spent in a jet, but apparently a manned phalanx shows up in a jets hud well before the poor bloke in the aa can see it. So if you think an enemy jet is incoming soon, rather than getting in the aa and waiting for it, wait for it just a step or two away from the phalanx. Since the aa is then unmanned it wont show up on the jets hud and he will think he is free to rape, then when the jet appears (hopefully aiming for the carrier deck rather than the AA), jump in, lock on and proceed to scenario 2.
Commanders (originally suggested by Anomalov)
Commanders should be commanding. While im sure some of you are brilliant multi taskers, it is difficult to believe that you can properly operate a phalanx and drop cars and crates on snipers at the same time. STAY OUT, stop wasting a valuable asset.
The exception to this is if clearly NOBODY else is interested in operating the secondary turret. If nobody else wants it and you do then i suppose it isnt a problem, hell you might even fire off a missile or two every now and again. Just keep in mind that being in the phalanx makes you vulnerable to enemy jets as they can see you on their hud, so its rarely a good idea. Oh and if somebody else does want in on the 2nd turret get the hell out, go hide in the lower levels of the carrier or something and command!
Whats in it for me?
Okay Gibbsy, nice speil. Very interesting, etc. But i could get twice as many points running around with magical shock paddles reviving people. Why would i waste my time guarding the essex?
Good question. The answer is becasue it is extremely bloody satisfying. Taking down a J10 with the Phalanx despite all the disadvantages you have has to be one of the best feelings you can have in the bf2 world. Doing it regularly across an entire round, to the point when even the pilots you are shooting down are giving you respect is really fun. Statwhores can and should go elsewhere. But those who purchased the game because they wanted to have fun should give it a go sometime.
Thats about all for now. Happy hunting!
Edit: I currently consider this unfinished and any feed back / criticism / suggestions will be appreciated.
The Phalanx turrets! Why use them?
As anyone who has ever played a round on the US side on Wake with dominant J10 pilots will tell you, spawning on the carrier can be a real bitch. The J10s are capable of using their cannons (and bombs if they are feeling particulrly nasty) to destroy any aircraft that are trying to take off, massacre any infantry on the carrier deck, destory any rubber boats that leave from the underside of the carrier or the island and generally make the game seriously unfun for you. Meanwhile the pilots are racking up 100 point plus scores and expending very little effort to do so. Dice has provided us with two phalanx turrets each compromising of a vulcan mini gun and 8 sam missiles to protect your team. Manning these effectively can mean the difference between your team getting off the carrier, getting on wake and having a chance of winning the round and dying on the carrier, capping no flags and generally watching your Kd ratio going completely to ****e.
What is at your disposal?
The Phalanx does not want for firepower!! When sitting in the phalanx turret you have two options at your disposal. A vulcan cannon that virtually fires an uninterrupted line of powerful splash damage dealing shells, and a sam missile launcher that can quickly fire up to 8 sam missiles. While there is still a serious question mark in regards to the accuracy of the missiles, both are deadly, and since patch 1.2 i have found that if you manage to fire all 8 missiles at an aircraft, it usually gets hit atleast once. The Vulcan cannon is your short range defence and is capable of chewing up jets very quickly. The key to using the vulcan against jets is to lead your target slightly. At close range i usually find it best to keep the cross hairs centered on the very front of the aircraft, as this seems to score hits in middle of the planes fuselage. The further away the target the further ahead of it you will need to aim. Your own protection while sitting in the phalanx turret is actually quite weak, you can be destroyed by a shortish stream of shells from an incoming enemy aircraft. As a game balance measure i would suggest to EA that making the phalanx turret about 25% stronger would provide for more balanced game play, but you can still do okay with what you have.
What class should i be
Engineer to allow you to repair your phalanx when it gets damaged. Which it will. Often. You will almost never go into combat with a jet and come out undamaged unless the piolt is useless.
How to combat jets?
If you are in a phalanx and your enemy is in a jet then he is at an enormous advantage. Both of you have similar armor and similar firepower, but he can appear from anywhere within a 360 degree radius of you. Your location is fixed and if he is experienced then he knows exactly where you are. Still, you can overcome! As i said earlier, i am not a great bf2 player, but i have a positive kdr in air defense (almost all on wake, almost entirely against J10s) and im sure there are others that are a lot better than I. Here is how to do it. First step is ask, beg, plead with your teammates to spot any incoming jets. I remembered once we had no flags on wake so i jumped in the essex, but got destroyed a few times in a row buy a clever flier who appeared from unpredictable places and chain gunned me in the back. So i asked very politely over team chat for people on the carrier to spot the jets near the carrier. Almost instantly i get messages of "enemy jet spotted" with the help of the mini map i was able to turn to face the incoming jets before they could attack me and i was able to shoot both down. We didnt win the round but we managed to isolate the Chinese to the air field before our tickets ran out.
The specific tactics i use when confronting jets are pretty simple. Sams at long range and the cannon at short ranges and for self defence. This can best be described by outlining several different situations one might come across when defending against jets.
Situation one is when the jet comes directly at you. This is the move of the smart jetster, because once he has taken the phalanx out he is free to rape. Here i dont bother with sams, they are too inaccurate and time isnt on my side. I instead center my cross hairs on the inbound and blast away. You generally need about a second of contniuous hits to take a jet down, which is harder than it sounds but not impossible. When he is moving directly towards you just line it up dead center on the target and fire. Simple really. Practise this in quiet times by centering the crosshairs on your own jets as they fly across the carrier to rearm. There are a few possible results from his scenario. The first is that you die. THis means you didnt see him early enough (stay aleart and have people spot for you) or you didnt aim well enough (practice). The second is that you killed him (well done) and the third is that you damaged him and he pulled away, in this case i would suggest switching to missiles, locking and firing off as many as you can without killnig a friendly. I have gotten a lot of kills by damaging with guns and then killing with missiles.
The second scenario is when the Jet ignores you initially and attacks the carrier. Here i like to fire two or three missiles at maximum range, hopefully this will make him evade and mess up his attack run. When he gets closer fire your cannons aiming for the front of the aircraft, then as he passes over and flies away ripple off your remaining missiles. If the jet survives all this then chances are that the next attack is coming straight for you. So as he dissappears from view then be sure to see exactly where he leaves from, and what direction he looks to be turning. Make a mental calculation as to how much room he will need to turn and come back and center your gunsights on where you think he will appear from. Then go back to scenario 1.
Trash talk. Yep thats right. After the J10s figure out that the guy on the phalanx is formidable they may just stay the hell away from you. Meaning you are very bored. If you want repeat business i find the best way to do it is to trash talk the guys you have just shot down and challenge them to come and have another try. Often pride dictates that they will jump back in the plane and come straight back at you. Fun!
Against Attack Choppers
Attack choppers are just about your toughest opponents. The dont have the pace of the jets but they can tv missile you from a long way away and have enough armor to survive a lot of fire from your vulcan and that more than makes up for it. Your best counter is that you have 8 missiles, and need only 2 hits to take the chopper down. If i see a z10 coming in for a spot of carrier raping i basically know that the first thing they will try to do is tv missile the phalanx. Me. My first step would be to try and retard this attack. I do this by firing my first two missiles at the ac before its close enough for me to lock on. Hopefully the pilot will see the smoke trail and take evasive maneuvers which will in turn hopefully mess up the gunners tv missile shot. The next step happens after the chopper gets within range, you want to make it drop its flares. So lock on and fire 2 more missiles. The pilot cant ignore these and will almost always respond by dropping flares. That leaves you four missiles in your magazine. SO after the flares are gone, reaquire your target and ripple off all of them. Then you probably have one dead chopper and four points.
Unfortunately there are things that the ac pilot can do to null and void the above tactics. Figure it out for yourself.
Against Transport Choppers
Skycows are easy targets for you. Too big and not particularly manouverable so they cant avoid both your guns and your sams. Plus they are sometimes loaded with points......ermm enemy infantry.
Not a great lot of science to it. Lock on and shoot a missile or two. Wait for flares to drop and then shoot the rest of your missiles. If the infantry parachute clear then they are perfect targets for your vulcan cannon. If they land in the water either cannon them if possible, or if they are too close then get out and shoot them with your pistol. Easy!
Against Infantry
Occasionally enemy infantry will try to raid your carriers on foot. You have the ultimate anti infantry gun at your disposal. Use it, just do it in such a way that your own infantry dont get caught in the cross fire. Be careful to get them quickly though as you are only an erix hit away from death at any time.
Against Boats
If you spot an inbound boat from out to sea then wait till its a comfortable range away and then cut it in half with your vulcan. If its too close then spot it and hope one of your helos can take it out, or alternatively just let them get aboard the carrier and then murder them with your vulcan when they climb up to the flight deck.
GENERAL TIPS
Scanning
The best way to not get taken by surprise is to scan constantly, look up, look down, shift side to side. If you hear an "Enemy Jet Spotted" then look straight to your minimap. Look at the sun regularly to make sure no jets are diving out of it. Remember a pesky jet can appear from pretty much anywhere, and usually the first thing you see is a stream of shells heading towards you. Be alert because you dont have long to react.
Double Trouble (originally suggested by baggygreen)
As mentioned earlier in the guide the essex has not one but two CIWS turrets. The primary turret is located at the end of the flight deck, the secondary is located on top of the super structure at the other end of the ship. If both are effectively manned you can set up a nasty little death trap for any marauding enemy pilots. Unfortunately the firing radius of the secondary turret is blocked quite significantly by the ships super structure. But this can be a positive as well as a neagtive as it gives you good protection and means you can be attacked by from less angles than the primary turret can. The second turret is rarely manned by anybody, that gives it the advantage of surprise. Often a plane will chain gun the flight deck and then unthinkingly blunder into the kill zone of the 2nd turret.
If you find that both turrets are being regularly manned, work out who the other guy is and SQUAD UP. Talk it through on voip, warn each other of incomings, and SPOT SPOT SPOT. Unfortunately ive never seen this work, but in theory two skilled aa gunners working together effectively should easily be able to turn a carrier into an inpenetrable fortress that enemy planes only dare to attack when bored of life. Kinda like in real life i guess.
Pick your moment (originally suggested by iburnasses)
Another good tactic that i find works is waiting for a plane to begin making its attack run before jumping in the essex. I didnt know this initially due to lack of time spent in a jet, but apparently a manned phalanx shows up in a jets hud well before the poor bloke in the aa can see it. So if you think an enemy jet is incoming soon, rather than getting in the aa and waiting for it, wait for it just a step or two away from the phalanx. Since the aa is then unmanned it wont show up on the jets hud and he will think he is free to rape, then when the jet appears (hopefully aiming for the carrier deck rather than the AA), jump in, lock on and proceed to scenario 2.
Commanders (originally suggested by Anomalov)
Commanders should be commanding. While im sure some of you are brilliant multi taskers, it is difficult to believe that you can properly operate a phalanx and drop cars and crates on snipers at the same time. STAY OUT, stop wasting a valuable asset.
The exception to this is if clearly NOBODY else is interested in operating the secondary turret. If nobody else wants it and you do then i suppose it isnt a problem, hell you might even fire off a missile or two every now and again. Just keep in mind that being in the phalanx makes you vulnerable to enemy jets as they can see you on their hud, so its rarely a good idea. Oh and if somebody else does want in on the 2nd turret get the hell out, go hide in the lower levels of the carrier or something and command!
Whats in it for me?
Okay Gibbsy, nice speil. Very interesting, etc. But i could get twice as many points running around with magical shock paddles reviving people. Why would i waste my time guarding the essex?
Good question. The answer is becasue it is extremely bloody satisfying. Taking down a J10 with the Phalanx despite all the disadvantages you have has to be one of the best feelings you can have in the bf2 world. Doing it regularly across an entire round, to the point when even the pilots you are shooting down are giving you respect is really fun. Statwhores can and should go elsewhere. But those who purchased the game because they wanted to have fun should give it a go sometime.
Thats about all for now. Happy hunting!
Edit: I currently consider this unfinished and any feed back / criticism / suggestions will be appreciated.
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