Complete jet flying guide

Jet unlocks

1. My pilot experience

To date I have spent nearly 17 hours on jet which is more than enough to learn basics, figure out some mechanics and understand how things work. For all the knowledge I had to read through many forums, watch dozens of videos and figure things out myself. I'm not saying I'm the utmost professional in flying, but I can manage alright against most pilots on public games. So far I have reached Service star 4 in jets and am about half way to fifth star. Answer to your question: I fly with mouse and keyboard.

2. Unlocking jet upgrades and how to get service stars

The figure above shows you the unlocks of my jet. As you can see I have unlocked everything. To unlock everything you need to get 35 000 score on jet. That also awards you with a jet service start. Once you do it again (total score with jet reaches 35k + 35k = 70 000) you get service star 2 and so on. This same pattern works for class service stars and other vehicles. There are 13 perks to unlock for jets as you can see in the figure above. Unlocks listed in order shown in the figure:

Top Row, left to right: Flares, Heat seekers, Stealth, Belt speed

Second row, left to rigth: Proximity scan, Rocket pods, Air radar, Below radar

Third row, left to right: Extinguisher, Maintenance, Guided missile, Beam Scanning

Bottom row: ECM Jammer

3. Unlocks explained

Flares: First upgrade is flares and it is my favorite perk in jet. Missile lock has 3 phaces. Locking, Locked and Missiles away. They all have unique sound and it is important to be patient with the flares. If you launch them too early the enemy can wait for the flares to go away while keeping you locked and fire right after. You shouldn't use the flares until the missiles are on their way. After launching flares there is a short cool down and during that time you are vulnerable to any incoming missiles and it comes to down to your maneuvers to avoid them. Here is a really good video on how to use flares and also how to recognize the different locking sounds. Previous video is in chopper cockpit, but the basic idea is exactly the same in jets. Dice has made avoiding the missiles with maneuvers harder in many patches so you need to rely more on using flares.

Heat seekers: This is the second upgrade and is only good until you unlock Rocket pods which to me is a must have. Heat seekers lock into enemy air units and you can shoot two rockets simultaneously or individually to your target. These missiles are homing, but the enemy can use various counter measures to avoid them. Heat seekers cannot be shot into ground targets.

Stealth: This is another upgrade only usable in the beginning and useless after you unlock Air radar later on. This perk makes it harder to get a missile lock on you and also spotting you takes more time.

Belt speed: This upgrade only works for your main gun. Basically when you run out of ammo it takes a shorter period of time to reload your main gun. Doesn't work on rocket pods, heat seekers or guided missile.

Proximity scan: This is totally useless in jet. Proximity scan shows nearby infantry on radar. I would use stealth before I reach Air radar.

Rocket pods: This is the best weapon upgrade as secondary weapon. Rocket pods are air-to-ground missiles. There are 14 rockets in rocket pods and after shooting them all (or hitting reload button - R by default somewhere between 14 and 0) it takes a while to reload. If you hit all 14 rockets to a tank or AA-gun it is enough to disable it. Second set of rockets would be enough to destroy it. Now why this is best secondary weapon in my opinion is that if you use heat seekers, you are only good against air units. Say you are able to control the air space you are then useless to your team unless you can effectively shoot on ground targets and help you team giving air support. Guided missile will lock on to land vehicles and shoots a single missile, but it is not effective enough compared to rocket pods. Shooting all your rockets to a tank disables it and makes the finishing an easy job for an engineer to take destroy the tank.

Air radar: This is a must have upgrade for jets. Your minimap turn into air radar displaying nearby enemy jets and choppers. One of the keys in dog fighting is using air radar to know where your enemy is when you lose visual contact. Then you can out maneuver your enemy and get on it's tail.

Below radar: Once you unlock this perk it is always on. Basically what this does is when flying on really low altitudes, enemies can't lock on to your jet.

Extinguisher: This one goes for the same slot as Flares and ECM jammer. Everyone has an opinion which is the best choice for this slot. Extinguisher doesn't prevent missile locks or distract incoming missiles. What extinguisher does is replenish you from disabled state. After it has been launched you can continue flying and wait for automatic repairs to fix your jet or land down to fix it yourself. In games where you are very seldom locked I would prefer extinguisher, but most often you get locked and shot all the time. That's the reason I use ECM jammer or Flares.

Maintenance: Like Below radar this perk is passive in jets. Once you unlock maintenance it is always on. This upgrade makes you recover faster from damage, but it won't work if you get disabled by the enemy. Extinguisher is the only perk that brings you back from disabled state.

Beam scanning: This is like a counter perk to Stealth. This one helps you lock on to enemy air/ground units faster when using heat seekers or guided missile. If you're using beam scanning and enemy unit is using stealth the locking time would be normal. Again this is pretty useless because you can't use air radar if you have beam scanning and heat seekers and guided missile is useless.

ECM Jammer: This is arguably the best anti-missile system for your jet. What it does is it leaves a smoke cloud behind your jet breaking any missile lock to your jet and even prevents any locks for a short period of time. Also when launched you disappear from the enemy's Air radar for the same amount of time as you are unlockable. This should also distract incoming missiles, but is not quite as effective as the flares are. The reason why I use flares is that it is more reliable. There has been a few sitsuations when ECM Jammer wont go off even though the cockpit intarface states the jammer is ready. Some videos suggest that ECM Jammer works the best when the missile is coming from behind. The cloud always appears behind your jet and so makes the jammer most effective against missiles incoming from behind.

Here is a 14.19 minute long YouTube -video discussing the jet upgrades.

Here are my pics for jet perks. Air radar is a no brainer. This is an absolute must have when flying and dog fighting. Second must have is rocket pods to be able to give efficient air-to-ground support. Third and only pick you really have to make is the choice between anti-missile systems flares/extinguisher/ecm jammer. Since Dice patched missile dodging harder when simply using maneuvers I don't use extinguisher any more. I get hit too often. ECM Jammer happens to be bugged as of today and it is not so reliable. If it gets fixed it would be the best perk because of the ability to break a lock, prevent a lock, disguise you from air radar and distract incoming missiles. BUT, as I said flares are the most reliable and that is the reason why I choose flares at the moment. Feel free to disagree with my choices.

4. Understanding the flying/controls

First of all let's go through the keyboard controls. W,A,D,S keys are: throttle up, Yawn left/right, throttle down. Let's first look at the accelerate. When you take off all you need to do is get your jet in air and once you are off you can release the W key. Your jet will go to normal cruising speed at around 340 knots. Your jet will maintain this speed without you holding W.

A and D are for yawn left/right. I've read some professional pilots with customized controls wont necessarily bind these because it wont do much. These buttons also allow you to steer when jet is on ground. I use Yawning when I'm targeting a tank with my rocket pods and need a slight budge to the left or right and it works fine to be more precise.

S key is a throttle down. When you hold down S key your speed will go down and eventually when your speed is low enough the jet automatically lowers landing gear and allows you to land your jet. S key has a special function with the USA's F35 jet. When your speed goes down and you hold your S key down it goes in to hover mode allowing you to hover above ground. Also when you are not moving and are on ground you can press S key down to hover up from the still position.

Left shift is the afterburner which basically adds more throttle than simply pressing throttle up (W key). When going at normal cruising speed at around 340 knots adding afterburners will allow you to go faster than 400 knots. Afterburners are best used when taking off to get up faster and if you need to quickly escape an AA-gun or a chopper locking on to you. In some occasions it is good to catch up with an enemy jet or a chopper. However, afterburners will reduce your maneuverability since you are moving to fast to make tight turns. I will discuss more about tight turns later on.

Number keys 1 and 2 switch between your main and secondary weapon. Main weapon in jet is always a machine gun which is the best weapon for taking out enemy jets and choppers. When you hit key 2 you switch to secondary weapon which can be a heat seeker, rocket pods or guided missile.

In soft core servers you can switch to third person view by hitting the C key. This allows you to have a better view that happens around you. C key switches the camera between cockpit and third person. When in cockpit view you can use right mouse button to have a free look. This works in both hard core and soft core.

Mouse is the one controlling your crosshair and pitch up/down and rolls your jet over. The left mouse button is used for shooting the weapon you got activated primary/secondary. The second mouse button is for free look when in cockpit view (read more in next section). When making a loop you need to understand that when you make a pulling gesture with your mouse, you don't have to immediately make a new move like as fast as possible. When you pull your mouse back you realize that for a short period of time your jet maintains the movement and you get enough time to make a new pulling gesture. Here is a good tutorial video on YouTube showing how the keyboard and mouse works.

By reading a lot of comments and opinions on forums some people suggest that the best pilots binds pitches and rolls to your keys so you can fluently keep pitching or rolling while maintaining your speed at an optimum level (read more about maintaining optimum speed in Dog Fighting section). All you need to do with mouse is focus on aiming the enemy while dog fighting.

Below some references I could find about binding keys and such: http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2832654489797610549/
http://forums.steampowered.com/forums/showthread.php?t=2723885

5. Cockpit explained

Click to enlarge.

In cockpit you see a HUD (heads up display) with many different indicators. There are only few important features and the rest are not that important like heading indicator, altitude, how tilted your jet is, your elevation, G-forces and what not. In this image you can see I'm using flares and also air radar. The jet's HUD tells me Flares are ready to be used. The box on the top left shows my velocity in knots. Normal cruising speed is ~340 knots while full speed with afterburner is ~420 knots. When in cockpit view you can hit Mouse 2 to free look around from the cockpit and you can also spot people from the cockpit. By aiming your crosshair to enemies and pressing the Q key you spot enemy units. Also you can use free look to spot ground and air units. This is very helpful for your teammates (though spotting wont work on hard core servers). Later on when I talk dog fighting I'm gonna refer to the velocity meter shown in the image.

6. Aiming on target

Aiming is done by your crosshair in cockpit view. It is very hard to explain how you can actually hit your enemies. You need practice and you need to watch videos and see how other people do it. You can learn to aim by basically watching any jet gameplay video where is dog fighting involved. Keep on eye how much in advance people shoot in different distances to the enemy and such things. Here is a link to a 10 minute YouTube video where a good looking pilot gets over 60 kills.

Here's my tip for aiming. As you can see when you hit enemy there is an extra indicator around the crosshair that shows you hit your enemy. When you approach your enemy shoot really short burst to get your hitting indicator to show and then make longer burst when you're hitting the enemy jet. If you hold down your attack key you'll run down ammo quick and have to wait to be able to shoot again. Most of the bullets will miss. It's best to stay calm and make short bursts to get your aim to target and then finish your enemy off.

7. Dog fighting

Dog fighting is basically two jets fighting against each other (there can be more jets involved in real BF3 situations). Dog fighting means that both jets tries to out maneuver the other and get behind the enemy jet. This takes a lot of practice to master and there are certain tips and tricks to know before you can be a successful dog fighter. Learning maneuvers from videos is something I find a bit weird. You see lots of YouTube videos where people show their maneuvers in an empty server. The best maneuvers, however, comes from reading the enemy coming at you from whatever direction and make the correct maneuvers to get behind or get into a better position to your opponent. With a series of loops and circles and intrigues you eventually should get behind your opponent to take the enemy jet down.

You need to know where your enemy is at all times to be able to out turn the enemy. This is where air radar comes in handy. It shows the enemy jet at all times except if your enemy launches ECM Jammer mentioned in the upgrades section. Also in soft core servers you can go to third person view to have a better look of the surroundings. You can use things like shadow to locate your opponent. Sometimes when you are turning and get a peak at the ground you see the enemy jet drawing a shadow on the ground which tells you the direction the jet is going.

Making the tightest turns is the ultimate key to beating your enemies in dog fighting. There's a lot of confusion how it works. Some people complain that it was only doable with heavy brake that was removed from the game as discussed on earlier post. Some people suggest you should add afterburners in the turn to make the turn tighter. I gotta tell you the truth, those are all wrong assumptions. To a certain point they are correct you need to slow down or speed up, but what they don't understand is the key in tight turns: maintain your speed. A jet flying at cruise speed is 340 knots. When you descent your jet you gain more speed because of the gravity and lose speed when ascending. That's where you need to apply throttle down or afterburners. But this must not happen when on or nearby cruising speed. Arguably the sweet spot for the tightest possible turn is 312 knots. (Couldn't find many references, but some guy comments here the sweet spot being 310 knots). Anything around 305-315 knots will make an excellent turn compared to public players in general and you can out maneuver most public heroes. To maintain your speed you have to take time to practice it. As mentioned in the cockpit section you can see your velocity when in cockpit view. Look for the box in top left corner. Go to an empty server and try making loops and turns maintaining your speed at 312 knots. It's pretty hard at first, but you'll get there. Once you learn to maintain it in cockpit, now try maintaining the speed on third person view. You can't monitor your speed in third person view which makes it very hard. When you're on top of the loop starting to head down you gain speed because of gravity so you need to throttle down to keep the speed at around 312 knots. Visa versa on the bottom of the loop you need to apply some heat to get the speed up to 312 knots. Got it? Good.

It didn't work out for me trying to copy maneuvers from different videos. I learned maneuvering better by watching a gameplay and making notes how professional pilots react on different situations where enemies approach from different directions.

Here is a good video for your dog fighting tactics, also there is a punch of maneuvers and other interesting stuff like the cockpit hud explained in detail.

8. Serious flying business

The next video is the most impressive I've seen so far. A player called ChrisStrawhat is up against #1 and #2 leaderboard pilots called -AlphaNerd-Ger- and GrieferKiller. I checked the current stats in leaderboards today while writing this posts and looks like -AlphaNerd-Ger- has passed GrieferKiller, but they are still holding the two top positions. All credits goes to video uploader, hyliancriss, who I assume to be the "ChrisStrawhat" flying in the video. Enjoy!

Please comment and rate this guide and feel free to ask questions or give ideas if an important piece of information is missing.

How Engineer's RPG/Smaw damages tank

My choice for engineer is always RPG/Smaw. I don't use Javelin because I need to get a lock on target, it takes time to travel and is relatively easy to evade completely using smoke. It also has very little ammo even with the explosive perk. Javelin would be a killer with effective laser targeting, but that never happens on public games which I play mostly. Igla and Stinger on the other hand are pretty much a joke against any experienced jet or chopper pilot.

This post demonstrates how the damage system works against battle tanks. If shot correctly RPG/Smaw can disable a tank in one hit. There are two variables affecting the damage: angle and direction.

Tank has four sides: front, two sides and rear. Every tank has the strongest armor in front to have best armor confronting enemies. Sides are a bit weaker and rear being the weakest. As you can see from the image on the right a direct hit from the front makes 21% damage to the tank while shooting from the rear it makes up to 55%, hence, disabling the tank in one hit.

The other variable is angle. You make the most damage to a tank when you shoot it in a 90 degree angle. Any angled shot has highly reduced damage compared to a direct hit from 90 degrees. As the image shows, angled shots to the front and sides only make 18% damage and are the worst possible numbers from a single rocket. If shooting in angle it takes up to 3 rockets to disable a tank which is way too many to stay alive on foot and if there is an engineer fixing the tank it's impossible. Even the damage to the rear is greatly reduced (down to 31%) when shot in an angle. Now when you are hiding in the jungle and waiting to shoot down a tank, think of these numbers.

Note that the numbers in the picture are not a 100% guaranteed. Sometimes there are small changes.

It's pretty much obvious you should always try to get behind the tank or at least get a clean hit from the side. The first impact should count for disabled/nearly disabled tank. When on a disabled state a tank will leak health quickly and it will be easy to finish it off. Even the 36% chunk off tank's health makes the tank's screen go fuzzy and makes it harder to identify you from your hiding position. Most likely when tank takes heavy damage enemy soldiers exit the tank either to repair or run away and makes them an easy target for your main gun.

Below is a pretty thorough YouTube video of testing these mechanics. This video was published on April 22nd. The damage numbers have changed in new patches so the numbers you see in the video are different than my numbers here. Credits to Joshuanelsn for the upload.

There are also numbers in the video description for Javelin and C4 hits. Those actual numbers might be different today, but they should give you general idea.

Jet gameplay: Is there a Heavy Brake?

Heavy brake has been removed from the game

I've watched dozens of how to -videos when learning to fly a jet and came around with Heavy Brake. Many YouTube comments have discussed about it and turns out the heavy brake was first introduced in Back to Karkand DLC, but it was never bindable through the game options menu. In the options menu there is only the normal so called light brake which is S-key by default on PC.

It has been confirmed that there is no longer such thing as heavy brake. See here for discussion on official forums: http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2832654348006759209/. It was removed from the game in a patch last April. According to some users on forums the same patch also made light brake more effective. I couldn't find any reference for the actual patch notes.

What it used to be..

To be able to access the Heavy Brake you had to download a setting editor tool that allows you to edit and tweak your bf3 settings even the ones that cannot be found in the game menu. This editor tool can be downloaded here.

In the YouTube video below you can clearly see the huge difference between light and heavy brakes. Look at the velocity meter on the upper left corner of your jet cockpit interface. Normal cruising speed for jet is just above 340 knots and with after burners it goes above 400 knots. Notice the drop on velocity when using light and heavy brakes.  All the credit for this video goes to the uploader, crsEnrico.

The tool is still out there and some of you must be thinking if this tool is allowed by Dice. For the reference see the quote in the FAQ section written in the tools website below:

"DICE has not made any official statement about BF3 settings Editor; however, they are aware that it exists and is in use by many players. It is unlikely that they would officially approve it as it is a third-party tool, but it is also very unlikely that they would decide to disallow it. A DICE employee even posted to say it was a "cool tool" and give us advice to help us improve it."

In my opinion, heavy brake was very good when landing jet quickly to repair. It didn't give any advantage on dog fight situation though. Maybe in some situations some inexperienced pilot might fly past you and you get behind them, but I wouldn't count on that. Key in dog fighting is making the tightest turns by maintaining your speed somewhere between 305-315 knots. The unofficial sweet spot is said being 312 knots. You can monitor your jet speed in cockpit view. You can see the velocity indicator in the YouTube video above, it's the box on top left corner.

http://img.paronity.com/F0Be this image shows Heavy brake / Hover in the editor. In F35 jets holding S-key long enough puts you into hover mode as well when your velocity drops below certain point. Of course you can also use any text editor to open the settings file, but this program makes it easier for users.

References:
On official forums: http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2832654348006759209/
BF3 settings editor tool:  http://bf3.realmware.co.uk/settings-editor/
YouTube video used in this post:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIkgecOdMeA
On official forums: http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2832654347904418076/
Discussion on random forum: http://forums.gentsgame.com/viewtopic.php?nomobile=1&f=9&t=77
more discussion: http://gsngaming.com/topic/4017-jet-heavy-brake-not-ingame-here-is-how-you-use-it-for-jet-fans/

About this blog and my background

Hello everyone!

This blog is all about Battlefield 3. I will discuss about the game mechanics, give out gameplay hints and tips, talk about updates etc. Below is a bit of my background as a player and also more detailed explanation of what this blog is about.

I started playing games when my parents bought our first computer. Since then I always had a thing for first person shooters. It was the mid-late 90's. I have a long history in FPS games starting from Wolfenstein 3D, Doom 1& 2, Duke Nukem 3D, then later it was Return to Castle Wolfenstein, Counter-Strike, Battlefield 1942 (I loved the Invasion of Normandy map) then the latest game FPS game was Enemy Territory. After that I kind of slipped into RPG's and whatnot playing World of Warcraft and some strategy games and I always found Blizzard's Diablo series on of the best game series of all time. At the time Diablo 1 was selected game of the year in 1996 and it was revolutionary back then. Diablo 2 was another huge game in the millenium with the expansion and lately I also played plenty of Diablo 3 which was a slight disappointment and is also another story and I'm quite off topic as it is.

In Battlefield 3 I am currently Colonel service star 9 and have 145 hours played. During those 145 hours I have unlocked almost everything in game with few exceptions. All of my classes have at least one service star and I have also unlocked most vehicle upgrades. I feel pretty confident on battlefield and pull off pretty okay statistics each round. I own Battlefield 3 premium and get all the expansions in advance of their scheduled launch dates. Currently my favourite maps are from Back to Karkand expansion, but I find Armored Kill maps very interesting. Once I play more of them I'm pretty sure it's the best expansion yet.

Due to fact that I don't have too much time to play these days I only play public games though I'd really like to try this game in a clan. Clan matches really bring another dimension to every FPS game and I encourage everyone to try it. The difference between clan and public games is the team work which is really hard to achieve with an average public player mostly due to lack of communication (voice) and also most players in public are inexperienced. I've tried to make friends with any decent team player I meet, but I still don't have enough friends to have players online when I get the time to play. Also my play times are irregular which makes me unreliable friend.

In this blog I try to blog about the news on whats going on in the scene and also write about stuff concerning battlefield and maybe even add some guides to help you playing. I am very competitive player and I want to win every time and if I lose, instead of flaming in game chat I try to think the situations in battlefield and figure out what I could have done different. Lot of situations are lost because of bad team play and there's not much you can do yourself to help it, but other times you can. To be the best out there you need to play countless hours learn to efficiently use vehicles and classes and most importantly read stuff about battlefield and watch videos of it.


In forums people discuss about the game and give their opinions and perspective (ignore the trolls and whatever idiots). You get very important information of the game mechanics and learn to understand all aspects of the game. Just by knowing how the game works you get an advantage over most of the players out there. I learned to fly jest and choppers just by watching videos and then searching an empty servers to practice  After dozens of crashes I can fly jet well and chopper pretty okay too. Always got plenty to improve, but the for the hours I get to play and compared to other players in public I'm doing very good. People don't even realize what you can learn by simply reading and watching. For example you can enter a tank drive around the deserts and try to shoot the crap out of people. Well.. that's fine too, but by learning how everything works like how can you exit the tank on the side you wish and that kind of stuff saves your life many times and most often makes you beat the opposing tank. I find it more satisfying to be alive killing enemies rather than staring the deployment window.

This is the end of my first blog text. I try to update the blog as much as possible with interesting subjects all about different areas of Battlefield 3. Stay tuned and see you next time!