¶ Dogfighting
While dogfighting is much less popular ever since the introduction of MR/LR missiles, Arma does an awful job at making BVR enjoyable and actually viable. More often than not, you might find it hard to actually find and lock onto the enemy beyond visual range without getting close enough to transition to a dogfight.
It's difficult to explain what you should do in a dogfight in text but I will provide some general tips and some example dogfights against another player.
General tips:
- Keep your eyes on your enemy at all times. It may not be realistic to be essentially breaking your neck to look behind you, but do it regardless. If you're aware of where your enemy is, what they're doing right now and where they might be in the future, you'll have much higher chances of survival.
- Don't waste your missiles, while my examples may show us having lots of ammo, this is usually not the case in normal missions as either you carry a mixed loadout, or you just simply carry smaller amounts of each missile (unless you have an option to manually change your pylons). Missiles are incredibly powerful, but can also be useless if you do not use them effectively.
- Don't spray and pray with the gun, planes in Arma are unusually resistent to gun rounds (at least it feels that way when using jet gunpods, anti-air vehicles are much more effective) and at times it may feel like you're dealing no damage (it's a health bar system, rather than a detailed damage model) but it may just require more shots than you expect.
- Don't overcommit. It's easy to use your energy and turn as hard as you can to get an opportunity to get your guns on the enemy but if you fail to get the kill then and there, you're going to find yourself in an awful position. Unless you know you're going to be in a losing position soon, it may be wise to follow the natural flow of the fight.
- Minimise the time you spend directly in front of the enemy. While you can very much slow down rapidly and watch them fly right by, it's a huge risk if you don't do it at the right time and in the right way.
Now some examples (I apologise for poor mic quality in advance):
https://youtu.be/mUw27rlaYKY
https://youtu.be/9L5LIsCy6JU
https://youtu.be/bhtCdToP9HI
https://youtu.be/URGKwRVDeCw
Comments:
We've tried to demonstrate dogfights in various aircraft without forcing it into a very fake situation, but obviously avoiding the initial head-on that can end things quickly (against AI at least). Going for the merge together without attacking ensures both players start at the same point to demonstrate plane and/or player advantages.
You might also notice that at times I may send a missile that is very unlikely to hit, but due to how much ammo we had it made perfect sense to use them as a distraction (forcing the other player to evade can be great)
I also realise that some of the advice I give may not be applied in these examples, but it's important to remember that everything happens subconsciously in these fights due to how quickly the fights evolve and of course, you can do whatever you like as long as you win in the end. 