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NoConflict wrote this reply to a post in the General forum here that I thought was so good and so useful that it should be copied here. Enjoy.
- Staying Alive: Jets can SEE YOU! Try to avoid actually being IN the gun mount as much as possible. You're a nice green square or pink triangle to a jet pilot when in the gun mount, (as a pilot, I like to call that box the "Free Score!" box), and you can bet your buttocks that a good pilot is going to assign a manned AA site high priority. So, if a jet is approaching, be prone or crouched near the launcher whenever possible, and then jump in after the jet has passed, and follow the tips below. I realize that sometimes it's not possible to do this, and sometimes, you just gotta stand there with your John Thomas waving in the wind watching the bombs arc in or tracers draw a line towards your soft and tender bits, but that's part of the job.
With choppers, you're not quite as visible as you are with jets, but the combination of lower altitude and lower speed means a chopper pilot/gunner can just eyeball the mount and see the top of your cute little head and know he's looking at a live AA site, and act accordingly. So once again, it's best to stay out of the site if you're in his field of vision and fire. And good pilots know the locations of all the AA sites on a given map, don't give them an excuse to punch your ticket unless you can bloody their nose too.
But pilots are not supermen, and don't have x-ray vision or eyes in the back of their head, and they rarely look to the sides either. Take advantage of that. A target moving at an angle or away from your position is unable to attack you, and will take some time setting up a retaliation attack once you sound his missle alarm as you lock on. Angle/rear also gives you more engagement time and a better chance to hit if the target is not moving directly towards you.
Another problem with AA sites is that you're in a fixed location for ground attack as well. Snipers can ruin your day, but there are ways to at least make it harder for a sniper. For one, it's hard to get a torso shot on you while in the mount as a sniper, so they always go for the head. Rotate randomly if you suspect snipers are nearby while in the mount, it'll throw them off some (especially M24's), but be aware they've still got the drop on you and you WILL die if you stay there too long. If you decide to pop out of the mount, don't hit E and then Z, just exit and run the hell away, unless you know for SURE what angle the sniper is shooting from, in which case you MIGHT be safe behind the sandbags (but don't count on it).
You'll have to make the call if it's worth the risk staying in the mount when taking ground fire, sometimes it is (nice fat smoking Blackhawk about to cap a flag), sometimes it isn't (low confidence shot on a distant jet). And don't count on getting many ground kills with the missles, if you do kill somebody on the ground, it's luck, and you can't count on luck. Pop out of the mount and use your kit, your chances are much better.
- Know your missle: The Stinger/IGLA is stupid. It's a pit bull that'll bite anything in front of it, but can be fooled or out-turned, and unlike in real life, where a pilot doesn't know a heat seeking missle is coming until AFTER the launch, the Stinger/IGLA gives advance warning.
With that in mind, try to minimize the amount of time you give a jet pilot to react to your lock-on. The less warning he has that two explosive loads of proctological mayhem are about to give him a shrapnel enema, the better! This ties back into section 1, not being detected. If you're already in the mount, try not to lock on unless you have a good shot, because many times the pilot will oblige and simply GIVE you the shot, if he's not already busy dealing with the brown stains in his flight suit from a missle lock. This is not so important when dealing with choppers, but still something to keep in mind..when an attack chopper hears the tone, he'll probably start looking for you.
- Fratricide: On maps with a lot of air assets, it's very easy to get caught up in the heat of the moment and launch at an enemy, only to see your chat window light up with Team Vehicle Damage or Teamkill messages. Sometimes, this can't be avoided, because DICE did some funky coding with missle behavior. But many times, you CAN avoid getting TK's.
DO NOT FIRE AT A JET OR CHOPPER THAT IS BEING ATTACKED BY A FRIENDLY AIRCRAFT. If there is not clear sky between you and the bad guy, resist temptation and don't take a shot, because a Stinger/IGLA seems to likes the taste of friendly blood more than enemy blood. Don't give it that choice. But you can still play some mind games with the enemy pilot, getting a lock and making him go more evasive, which can buy your guys time to make the kill or get away.
KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE MINI MAP. Try to be aware of friendly air assets near your site. A missle can get a kill FAR outside your visual range (for instance, the Hotel AA site on Sharquai can hit the helos on the pads at the TV station and the MEC base across the bay, if they feel like it). So keep the map zoomed out and try not to put rounds downrange if there's a friendly in front of them.
- Flares: Flares are annoying, but it's possible to overcome them. The first tip is to have your reticle as high above the target as you can while still getting a tone signal. Flares (especially helo flares) drop quickly, and having the aiming point higher means that you can re-lock on the real target sooner.
Jets have a long cycle time on flares, and most pilots will use them almost as soon as they hear the missle warning tone. Choppers have short flare recycle times, but once again, the pilots drop them as soon as they hear tone in most cases. It doesn't take long to get a feel for how to deal with flares, but with choppers you have to take quicker shots than you would with a jet, which makes it important to get a hard lock as soon as you can after the flares drop.
- When to take the shot: This is the key to making AA effective, rather than just an annoyance.
Ideally, you want a shot up the tailpipe. While head-on hits are possible, they are less frequent, and it usually means you are under the gun of the target yourself, and about to have 15 seconds of quality time to pick your next spawn point and kit.
Side shots on jets are almost impossible to make, they move too fast. The only chance a side shot has of hitting is if the jet is far enough away that the missles have time to turn and go up the tailpipe, at close range it's almost pointless. With a chopper, a side shot can work quite well, especially at close range.
Learn to lead the target a bit. If you MUST take that side shot on a jet, don't aim directly at it, but as far behind it as you can while still keeping lock. That gives the missle more time to turn into the target. For a chopper, you can aim ahead or behind, above or below, either way works, depending on what the chopper is doing, but for best results at close range, targeting the area below the blades works well.
It only takes two Stinger/IGLA hits to drop a full-health jet, and the same with an attack chopper. Even a single hit on a jet can be valuable. He's now at half health and he's SMOKING. A smoking jet is an easier target for friendly jets in a dogfight, because he's MUCH easier to keep track of/spot, think of it as blood in the water (and you at least get a Kill Assist). A Blackhawk doesn't play by the same rules if there are engineers on board, but you can make their jobs harder, especially if they're already taking ground fire from somebody else.
- Carriers: Some of the above rules don't quite apply to the gun mounts on aircraft carriers. For one thing, you have EIGHT missles ready to launch, and that volume of fire is deadly. And you have the gatling gun as well, which can shred jets and choppers. So, when in a carrier, don't play possum, stay in the mount. Also, since you have eight missles in the tubes, taking head-on missle shots while firing the gatling is actually one of your best bets, especially if the enemy pilot is lining up for a run on you. Get a tone, and start launching BEFORE you get a lock, empty the magazine, and odds are pretty good you've just splashed one bandit. Of course, the odds are good that he's going to get you too (crashing, bombs in flight, gun hits), but you did your job and kept a jet out of the air for about a minute, got one or two kills, and will respawn at a healthy gun in seconds. And with any luck, there will be some drama back at the enemy airfield as jet whores TK each other trying to get in the pilot's seat. smile
A carrier has TWO gun mounts, which people seem to forget. Especially on maps like Oman where the carrier can end up being the only spawn point for the USMC, man both of those guns. The forward gun point is partially blocked by the superstructure, but that's not always a bad thing, because it protects you as well, and most pilots are not expecting that mount to be manned and generally make attack runs aimed at the aft of the ship and then fly right past your hungry missles, giving you excellent tail shots as they egress. Not to mention the fact that the forward gun doesn't have to worry about arty strikes that much. As an extra added benefit, the forward gun can discourage bored Spec-Ops players from blowing up your radar and UAV assets, as one of their favorite ways of getting on the ship is to zoom by in a jet and bail out over the front of the carrier. Parachutes don't have guns, or flares, and move REAL slow, meat for your gatling guns.
Gatling guns do heat up, and quickly, so try to make your shots count.
The carrier gun mounts are powerful. But with power comes responsibility. Putting eight missles in the air can be dangerous to your team, so follow the fratricide rules above as much as possible. That doesn't mean you have to hold your fire, you've still got the gatling, learn to lead with it and use it when a missle shot could mean a TK.
COMMANDERS, DO NOT JUST SIT IN THE CARRIER GUN MOUNT: Despite all the Commander tips that say to do this, DO NOT. Find someplace else to hang out, the hallways above the boatwell are safer (no arty worries, no jet worries) and you can do your job better down there, or up on the front superstructure. Don't waste a valuable asset just to keep the rain off your head. Even if you are a whiz at multi-tasking, you're going to be distracted using the Commander screen. The only time a Commander should be in a gun mount is when there are spawn points on land and the carrier is empty. If and when the land bases fall, get out of the can and let somebody work the gun full time.
TIP: If you've splashed a bad guy and have less than 8 missles in the tubes, aim away from the battlefield area (checking for friendly planes first!), and empty your tubes. You have unlimited ammunition, but you don't to be caught in a ten second reload cycle. It's always good to have a full load.
- Tunguska/Linebacker: The Tunguska/Linebacker has many of the same strengths the carrier mounts have, with the added advantage of being mobile, and with the very real weakness of having limted ammo.
Take advantage of that mobility! Don't hide in the hangers! For example on Kubra Dam, when I'm flying, I call the Tunguska/Linebacker in the garage or at the top of the dam meat because I know where it's at, I expect one to be there, and I can line up and kill that sucker every single time, just as easily as I can wipe out a Stinger/IGLA site. I call the Tunguska/Linebackers that are NOT sitting at home many things as well, some of them quite colorful, and none fit to use in polite company.
Get on a ridge, hide in a gully, be ready to move often, and try to stay stealthy (not locking on targets you can't hit) until you are ready to fire. A mobile AA vehicle that is mobile is as close to evening the odds as you can get in the battle of ground defense vs air assets, and probably the one thing a jet pilot fears as much or more than enemy jets.
Learn to use the gun! A Tunguska has a high rate of fire and fast moving shells, making it a better AA gun (as far as a chance to score hits) than the slower firing/slower moving 25mm shells on the Linebacker, and both require different amounts of leading the target. Get good with the guns and mobile AA becomes much more effective.
If the enemy has good pilots, don't waste mobile AA on ground assults. They're pretty weak (though the Linebacker does ok as ground support, it's the same 25mm found on the LAV) and should only be used for things like capping as a last resort. I hate seeing them used for one man taxis just to get to where the ground fighting is (where they blow up real quick), when there is a target rich environment in the air.
TIP: If you know you're going to be driving mobile AA, it's a good idea to be Support so you can restock your limited ammo supply, which is more important than being an Engineer and repairing it.
TIP: Just like the carrier, it's a good idea to have fresh tubes for an engagement, so if there's only one up the spout, empty it and reload. This may be a bad idea if you are not playing support or there's no support/crates around, because it does waste missles.
- BUT I STILL DIE A LOT: Yep, that's gonna happen, the jets and choppers will always have huge advantages over AA, and the quality of pilots playing BF2 keeps getting better. You're not going to get a lot of tickets doing air defense alone, and spending a good portion of a round in an AA mount can be boring at times.
But you still perform a valuable role as an AA gunner.
First off, if the bad guys are going after you (either for an easy ticket or self defence), they're not going after somebody else. I absolutely LOVE IT when a F-15/Su-30/Su-34 pilot burns up 5 bombs to kill me. That's five deadly bombs that aren't hitting my team, it means a trip back to the airfield to reload for the pilot, and more time for my side to cap/kill/etc. And you WILL shoot down the bad guys if you keep at it, which is also worth something.
Manning an AA site can also discourage Blackhawk caps. For instance, on Kubra Dam, I think that the AA site at the MEC airfield should ALWAYS be manned, since 99.9% of all USMC caps on that base (especially in the early game) are chopper pilots taking advantage of a nearly abandoned base. And that base is very important for the MEC to keep (planes, tanks, APCs,choppers, arty, radar, UAV).
Not to mention the psychological effect an AA site has. No self respecting jet pilot is going to fly straight and level if he's getting a missle warning. That means, even if he's not gunning for you, he's forced to be more evasive, and an evasive pilot is not as effective. He has to take quicker shots, he's less likely to slow down to engage choppers, etc. I've made planes run into mountains, buildings, even each other, with nothing more than that warble in their speakers (I'd guess that my "soft kills" with an AA site are not much less than my "hard kills").
And like I mentioned above, every time you send a pilot and crew back to the airfield/chopper pad waiting on a new bird, there's a chance of some drama as they fight over who gets to fly/gun, which is good for YOUR team and bad for THEIRS. smile
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