Nuclear Option – Tips to Fight for Pilots

Pilot Tips

Hide behind the hills. The only way to evade a missile (that isn’t some stinger, you can just outrun those) is with countermeasures or by making it crash into terrain.

For ARH

• Don’t try to notch+jam them. You technically can, but the angle is so small that it might as well be impossible.
• They usually miss when you fly below 20m. Usually. With the jammer, you can make them lose their lock completely, even if you fly a bit above 20m (don’t know how high).
• If you’re at high altitude with no nearby terrain when one gets launched at you, you’re probably dead. Don’t go high.
• They don’t go active until they’re 10km from you, so don’t waste your jammer on a missile warning 20km away from you. It’s guided via datalink, so hide behind the nearest hill until it stops beeping at you.

For IR

• Flares don’t work at full throttle unless you’re flying the cricket or the helicopter. Set your throttle to zero, wait half a second, then spam flares. Otherwise you’re just wasting them.
• If you know you’re about to get into a fight, cut the throttle. No need to wait for the missile.
• Don’t spam missiles unless you’re engaging a bomber. One is enough for everything else.
• Don’t launch missiles from far away. You’ll run out of missiles before the other guy runs out of flares.
• Don’t use flares when a missile is far away. More are probably on the way, so wait for one to get close and lose them all with a single burst of flares.
• Launch missiles from < 2km away for nearly guaranteed kills. Try to break line of sight as you approach, a lot of people fall for this. Basically jousting with missiles. The best way to not die to this is to cut your throttle beforehand and spam flares if you see a launch (don’t wait for the warning, close range = always IR, ARH missiles take a while to start tracking). Or just go in a different direction and bring shame to your family by backing away from an honorable duel.

Bonus Tip

If you’re on an attack run that takes you over an enemy on the ground, never fly in a straight line toward it. Good pilots always fly perpendicular or offset the path needed to make an attack, rolling in at the last second before using munition and leaving.

Great pilots (Not me) make elliptical flight paths toward a target to where they’re always banking, and that bank happens to intersect the attack path of the target which let’s them drop bombs or use their gun and roll out.

Flying in a straight line toward an enemy on the ground of any kind, even a little guy with a pistol, is the vast majority of the reason any pilots die. If You ever fly on a path that makes a target on the ground appear stationary, you also appear stationary to them in the sky. And you’re a LOT bigger target to them than they are to you.