How play f9f
#hey I just got the first f9f and I'm wondering how to play it
strong crag
south viper
right now the guns have been nerfed to shit (i'm still hoping it's just a bug) so your biggest crutch is gone
the f9f's used to be great support planes.
pretty mediocre performance, any good performing plane at your br will hand you your ass,
but the guns were exceptionally good. so all you had to do was come in, thrid party people and frag.
the overall handling also is pretty good, that makes it very easy to get your guns on target once you're in position
the f9f2 (the first) is pretty weak but turns pretty decent, but the f9f5 is much faster and still handles quite good, so if you really wanna play the f9f's, i'd advice you to skip the first one and play the -5
-8 is not worth it imo. you get 4 missiles and are marginally faster than the -5, but your handling is by far the worst. it is so ass to play, just don't.
overall i would skip any plane with AN/M3 cannons right now, they're boderline unusable
the cannon nerf migth get reajusted so i wouldn't write them off completely, before the nerf they were pretty fun
but to answer your original question. you are slow as fuck and you can dodge people decently well. you will always be on the defense. so your biggest priority is not to get spotted. don't be hyper passive, just passive enough so migs won't focus you down. if somebody want's you dead, you are dead.
commiting to dog fights means you are energy trapping yourself. you can dogfight in isolated scenarios, but keep in mind, if you have to disengage for what ever reason, you simply cant. you are too slow
the f9f2 is lighter than the f9f5 and therefore tuns better for the first couple of turns. but because it lacks the engine performance it will struggle maintaining energy so the sustained turn is kinda L